


Searching for the Righteous Man

by DC_Derringer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Cock-Blocking, First person POV - But everyone seems to like it, Implied Masturbation, M/M, Premature Ejaculation, Slow Burn, Supernatural style major character death - not permanent, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-23 00:03:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2526575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DC_Derringer/pseuds/DC_Derringer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean lived a long, happy, full life thanks to Castiel, and they were going to spend eternity in Heaven together. But when Dean is reincarnated, Castiel must find him, and ultimately decide if he should keep him, or let him go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for the 2014 Dean/Cas Big Bang.
> 
> Beta work was provided by musiclover1254, thisfeliciaday, and lazarusstorm. You can follow them on tumblr for similar antics to my own.
> 
> Artwork and a PODFIC!!! were provided by Litra and can be found here http://archiveofourown.org/works/2525339

“Cas,” Dean said to me one afternoon as we sat on our porch together, enjoying the dusky light and the cooling summer air. “You ever gonna let me die?”

“Yes,” I said, a bit absently. The topic had come up before, but as a curious query that was dropped just as suddenly as it came up. “When you’re ready.”

“I think I’m getting there,” Dean said after a long pause and a low sigh. “I’m tired.”

I nodded. Dean was 97. So much older than he ever thought was possible, and only possible because of me. I’d always been protective of Dean, but once we became romantically entangled, that need only grew. He’d always expected to die young, as hunters usually did, and I obviously protected him from that. But I also protected him from his own fragile body. I kept his heart strong after a lifetime of road food. Cleaned out his liver from years of drinking. Kept insistent strains of cancer from eating up his body. Even if he’d lived a healthy lifestyle, his genetics would have worked against him eventually. Greedily, I kept him running longer than he should have been. I wanted to keep us together as long as I could.

“What’ll happen, you know, after?” Dean asked.

“Your spot in Heaven is guaranteed,” I told him, meaning to be reassuring, but Dean screwed up his face with disapproval. “I’ll be there with you this time,” I went on, reaching out to touch his hand, and his face softened, but only a little.

“Same old greatest hits every day,” Dean murmured. “Forever.”

“The best memories are there if you want them. We can make new memories as well.”

“Hn,” Dean grunted, the sound neither positive nor negative. 

Like every time before, the conversation was dropped and we went on as usual, tending to our house and garden, helping younger hunters with research, and staying in touch with Sam, who also benefitted from my healing powers. 

~

Dean grew tired more and more often. But it wasn’t his body, so my grace could not touch it. Our discussions became more frequent, until finally we invited Sam to visit for the weekend. We had a big dinner of steaks, French fries and beer, without a vegetable in sight. My grace was working overdrive to keep their heartburn at bay. Sam was on the verge of tears all night, and Dean teased him, laughing it off with puffed up bravado. 

When the time came, we tried to corral Dean to the bedroom, where he would be more comfortable, but he vetoed that idea and took his place in the beat up old armchair he’d bought 30 years ago. I had reupholstered and freshened it’s stuffing many times, but it still looked old, and worn around the edges, like it was stretched too thin. A bit like Dean.

“It won’t hurt, right?” Sam asked.

“No. It’ll be like falling asleep,” I said to Sam. I’d told him all this before, reassured him over and over again on the phone and in person, but nothing could assuage the natural fear of death all humans feel, even ones who have experienced it themselves on several occasions. 

“Don’t be such a crybaby,” Dean said gruffly. “I’ll see you soon enough. We’re soul mates, remember?”

“You’re a jerk to the end, Dean.”

“You know it, bitch,” Dean gave Sam a cocky, yet tender smile. He took my hand and squeezed it, looking to me. “Ready when you are, babe.”

I leaned in to give Dean a kiss, just a light brush of lip against lip. There was no need for sloppy, hungry goodbyes. I would see him again soon. The flesh I had loved so dearly for so many years was nothing to the eternally youthful soul I could see inside him. The one I would keep for so much longer.

“I’ll see you soon,” I whispered against Dean’s lips. I kept my hand on Dean’s, but pulled my grace away, letting it ebb slowly from his body. This had been of great concern to Sam, and Dean as well, when we discussed how Dean would meet death. They were both uncomfortable with the idea of me deliberately causing it, using my grace to stop his heart, or something like it. But by this point, my grace was the only thing keeping Dean alive, without it, his body would just stop. Though I didn’t understand the finer points of their concern since the result would be the same, it calmed their nerves to think of it more as pulling the plug, than pulling the trigger.

Dean closed his eyes as my grace left him. His breathing slowed. His body stilled. His heart stopped. Another second passed, and his soul slipped free, floating away and upwards toward Heaven. Sam could not see this, but I told him his brother had passed.

Sam wept openly and I wrapped him in my arms. He had shrunk with age, losing much of his bulk and muscles, but I still had trouble encompassing his larger frame. I kept my logical words to myself; they were never of any comfort to Sam or Dean. Sam would see Dean again. They would be young forever. And safe. And I would be there as well. But still, Sam cried and mourned his brother’s passing. I held him for a long time.

As was tradition, Dean got his hunter’s funeral, a huge bonfire in our backyard, including all his most prized possessions. We did not want to take any chances that his soul would linger. As the fire burned hot, I held his wedding ring for a while longer. Sam had taken it off while he wrapped Dean’s body in cloth, and handed it to me. There was no question of keeping it. It was far too personal to keep from the purifying flames, but it did need a moment’s consideration. When Dean had first presented a ring so many years ago, I had worn it because it was custom, though it had no significance to me. I was bonded to Dean through love, without question, and could see it like a physical line between us. A small band of metal could hardly symbolize that. 

But as the years passed, and we wore our rings openly on our left hands, amongst other hunters and regular civilians, I grew to appreciate its visibility. I could see my connection to Dean, but no one else could. The ring helped with that. It marked our love, our devotion, and our possession so others could see it. There was no need to say or explain to anyone. This custom spoke as clearly as I did with my brethren, without the usual confusion of language. I grew to adore it.

I set the ring carefully in the flames. It represented my love for Dean’s body. He did not need it anymore, and neither did I. What I really wanted was waiting for me above in his truest and purest form. For me, the day had not been a goodbye, just a new chapter, and I was eager to begin.

“I’ll go check on him now,” I said to Sam once the pyre had burned down. “I’ll be back regularly to see you though. Pray if you need me sooner. I will come immediately.”

Sam smiled and pulled me into another long, emotional hug. I patted his back and squeezed him in return. The sorrow was still there, but ebbing softer than it had before. I pushed a little extra grace into him, to keep his spirits up, and he laughed, used to the feeling and appreciating it. I left then, a soft flutter of wings for a long awaited trip home.

~

Barely an hour passed, and I was tumbling back to Earth, my wings shaky as I tried to aim for the house I’d shared with Dean. The embers from his pyre were still hot, and Sam was half asleep on the couch with the TV turned low. I crashed back into the house and stumbled to the floor at his feet, waking him to full alertness. 

“Cas! What happened?”

“Your brother is a goddamned stubborn son of a bitch!” I said, spitting out the words around ragged breaths as I tried to hold back the tears that came in such a sudden rush.

“He isn’t there,” I sobbed. “He didn’t go to Heaven.”

“He didn’t… They can’t send him to Hell, Cas, you promised!” Sam shouted, worry and pain bellowing out of him.

“Not Hell,” I said shaking my head. “I could find him if he was Hell. I could get him back. But that pig-headed bastard went and got himself reborn.”

“Wait, what?” Sam asked. His anger ebbed, and confusion and curiosity took its place. He settled down on the floor beside me, and as his bones protested, I reached out with my grace from habit and soothed him.

“With other religions, sure,” I growled. “Sometimes even atheists. They get to the gates of Heaven, and it isn’t what they wanted, so they go back. I thought… I thought Dean had got past that. He said…” My voice broke, trembling out of me, and Sam wrapped an arm around me, tugging me close. I could feel him shaking his head, his anger rising again, the sort reserved between siblings, when you should have known how they’d behave, but convinced yourself they wouldn’t.

“But why didn’t he go through? You two had a plan.”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” I said, the words stronger than I felt. I had to convince myself that Dean had been ignorant, with no intention of hurting me. He was just as ignorant of reincarnation as Sam was, so he couldn’t have known the consequences. I had to believe that. “Too many bad memories about Heaven and angels. He said he wanted to go to Heaven, but he didn’t mean it in his soul. When he got to the gates, they must have sensed that and sent him back.”

“OK, so Dean’s a repressed knuckle-head. We knew that. Now how do we find him?”

“I can’t,” I said, the words ground out between my teeth, the tears welling in my eyes again, just as they had before, because I’d really fucked this up. “Maybe if I’d followed his soul up. I could have seen where it went… but now. He’s lost Sam. I’ll never see him again.”

“We can find him, Cas. You found him in Hell, all over Earth, even in Heaven. A little reincarnation won’t stop you, right? It’s still Dean, even if his body’s different,” Sam said, his voice irritatingly upbeat and hopeful. It was a quality I usually admired, but I finally understood why Dean found it so annoying when they were at the end of the line. 

“His soul’s changed now. I can’t see him anymore… I can’t track him.” I felt a sort of panic as I realized that. I always knew where Dean was, whether it was somewhere out of sight in our house, or if I was on the other side of the world. I could always sense the bright pulse of his soul, like a beacon pulling me home. But now that light was gone, lost among all the other souls covering the world, his as indistinguishable as any other. I felt lost in a sea with no direction to follow.

“Then we’ll find another way,” Sam said, his words more determined than his heart. 

~

Time passed, but I’m not sure how much. I’ve tried working out the math, and it may have been two years, but that doesn’t seem long enough. Then again, it seems so long. Two years could be a blink of an eye for me, but it was an eternity without Dean. 

I assume, from the results, that Sam must have been researching all that time. Following leads, tracking down texts, conjuring angels, demons, and all sorts of supernatural entities to interrogate for information. But I was unaware of his actions. I was barely aware of anything except when Sam forcibly snapped me from my stupor. I would blink and he would be in my face, ruffling my clothes and hair, causing clouds of dust to billow up. He would shout at me, asking me if I’d even moved while he was away in Portugal, Ghana, New Zealand, or wherever his research had taken him, and I would shake my head. Stillness was my only reprieve. I would just stop. No thoughts. No feelings. No actions. It was the only way to bear Dean’s complete and total absence.

“Cas,” Sam shouted at me one day, pulling me from my catatonia and dusting me off once more. How long had he been away that time? And what useless research would he have? He only bothered to wake me to press on about a new plan. Each one had been nothing more than a dream though.

“This is it, Cas. We’re going to find Dean,” he said, tossing a binder packed with loose pages in front of me. “Do you remember when you said you should have followed Dean up to Heaven immediately? So you would see where he’d gone?”

“Yes,” I said, the word spat out bitterly. I had not been so certain of it that first day, but over time, that moment had grown in my mind. Tending to Dean’s physical body, giving in to human ritual had caused me to lose sight of him. If I had just followed his soul, I was convinced I could have walked him into Heaven myself, or at least followed him when he was reborn.

“So get this,” Sam said, opening the binder. Inside were all sorts of papers and texts, in dozens of languages, modern and old alike. “All over the world, there are stories about soul mates. Over and over again they talk about soul mates dying, being reborn, and always being reunited. Always. Dean and I are soul mates, so when I die…” Sam drifted off, let the words sink in.

“You’ll be his brother again,” I said, finally looking Sam in the eye.

“Hopefully,” Sam said a little awkwardly. “Soul mates could mean… ah… you know…”

“No,” I said shaking my head. “Your bond is for siblings, like Cain and Abel. Michael and Lucifer. You will not be reborn destined to fall in love.”

“You better hope not,” Sam said, though he sounded physically relieved. “So that’s even easier. When I die, you follow my soul down to Earth, and you’ll be able to see him again. You can watch over us, make sure we’re safe, and when Dean’s a bit older, you can restore his memories, right?”

“Yes… of course,” I said, my mind wheeling around the possibility of seeing Dean again. “But, why wait? Once I find him, we can return to Heaven, and I can-”

“And just snatch him away from his parents?” Sam said with a gentle chide in his voice. “Dean’s almost two by now, we can’t destroy that family so you can be reunited. I know it sounds unbearable, but can you wait, just a little longer for him?” 

“When is it OK to snatch a child from his parents?” I asked with annoyance. Having Dean was so close, and Sam was saying I still couldn’t have him.

“I was thinking when he’s eighteen,” Sam said cautiously. “You can restore his memories, and he can make his own choice.”

“I’ve never understood your human fixation on the number eighteen, as though magically a human turns into an adult, with all the maturity and logic that comes with it, overnight,” I grumbled. Again I was caught up in human tradition, the very thing that made me lose Dean in the first place. I couldn’t let that happen again. “What if I switch out Dean’s soul? I can find another soul eager to be reborn and place it in the toddler’s body, then take Dean’s back to heaven with me.”

“Cas!” Sam said, with that appalled expression on his face reserved for when I said something that was incredibly offensive to humans. I didn’t see it as often as I once did, but it still came up occasionally. “I think his parents will notice if their son suddenly changes personalities.”

“So?”

Sam scowled but then rolled his eyes. “Cas, I know this isn’t ideal. But, we can’t hurt anyone just so you can get to Dean. If you can think of some other way to get him, I’ll gladly do it, but this is the only way I can figure. Can you wait?”

Could I wait? Of course I could. I could wait a millennia, unmoving and unblinking, while the universe crashed around me. I could wait sixteen years, hiding in the wings of a young man’s life while he grew into adulthood, healing from skinned knees with surprising quickness, and always just barely avoiding a more serious injury. I could wait for all these things, because I had the power within me.

But I wouldn’t.

“I can wait,” I said to Sam, smiling for him, just a touch, to show defeat and acceptance all at once. I would follow Sam, and I would find Dean again, and no mere mother and father would keep me from him, because he was mine. 

~

We still had to wait though, according to Sam. He had to get his affairs in order before he would let himself die. Everything he owned would pass to me, an exquisite collection of hunter paraphernalia that I would keep safe until he and Dean were old enough to remember it. The Impala, in particular, was of great concern to Sam. He’d been entrusted with it when Dean passed, and now he was giving it to me, because we both knew Dean would want it again, and it had better be in peak condition when he remembered it. 

Finally, Sam said it was time, and like his brother, he took up position on the beat up armchair, tense and energetic for this last job. He looked to me, nodding when he was ready, and I slowly pulled my grace from him. Just as before, his breathing and heart slowed, until both stopped and his soul broke free. This time, I did not watch idly, and reached out for him. My hand touched his soul, sending an electric shock through me, hot and powerful, but I did not let go. Sam’s soul tugged me, and together, we ascended to Heaven, heading for the so-called pearly gates where Sam would be greeted, and ultimately rejected. I could not let go of him, even for an instant.

As we approached the gate where Sam would pass through, my heart pulsed with joy. Soon I would be reunited with Dean, and we would be together forever. Nothing would keep me from him, not Sam’s moral high ground, not Dean’s human connection, none of this fuss over upsetting two inconsequential human parents. Dean was too important for that. Nothing could keep me from him.

Except slamming into a wall.

I hit it full force while Sam passed through easily. I lost my grip on him and watched as he floated away, trying to fight the flow of his soul into Heaven, but there was no stopping him. I banged on the gates, panic overwhelming as Sam was lost from my sight, but it was no use. I could not get through to Heaven that way. Stupid! To think I could enter as human souls did, when angels had always taken their set paths. I turned to one of those, and quickly passed into Heaven, but where had Sam gone?

I flicked quickly into the Heaven reserved for Sam and Dean, but not only did it lack Sam, it lacked anything else. The memories and shapes of their lives were gone, erased, and quickly being replaced to become some other soul’s Heaven. That meant Sam had already made his choice, rejected the afterlife and chose rebirth. I was running out of time.

I flew past my brethren, into parts of Heaven I did not know so well, where souls were collected and sent to new lives. I saw the stream of them, endless, countless numbers of souls, pushed together and processed to be sent out into life again. In their midst, I saw Sam, still in his shape and his memories, but not for much longer. I rushed to him, but the angels working there held me back.

“Careful Castiel, those souls are meant for rebirth. We cannot touch them,” one said to me gently, like I was just lost and out of place. 

“I won’t touch,” I said, keeping my eye on Sam’s bobbing soul, though it was getting farther from my reach. “But I must follow Sam Winchester to Earth. I must know where he’s going.”

“You… you can’t do that…” the other angel said. “This path is only for souls.”

“Please,” I said more desperately, tugging against their arms, but to no avail. “Let me pass. I have to follow Sam… I need to find Dean… Please!”

“Castiel, I’m sorry, but it’s not allowed. We cannot interfere with reincarnation.”

I pulled my arm from my well-meaning captors, and struck blindly at one of them. I lurched free for a moment as their cries went up in alarm. I rushed toward Sam, just at the edge of the swarm, ready to pass through and be wiped clean before he was reborn. I got close enough to see his panic and worry. He reached out to me with his soul and I reached for him, to hold him tightly again and follow him through, but the others caught me, three, four, five angels pulled me back, turned me away, held me back struggling and screaming as Sam was lost from my sight.

“No, no, no!” I screamed as Sam was reborn, his soul wiped clean, reshaped, and passed on to a new life, somewhere that I could not see. My brothers and sisters held me down as I thrashed in agony, wailing and screaming so loudly that my voice could be heard throughout Heaven. In vain they tried to calm me. With force they held me down, until I finally laid still, silent and unmoving as they pulled me away.


	2. Chapter 2

My brothers and sisters put me in a cell for a time, they said to keep me safe, but it was also so I would not hurt them. Though I stopped screaming myself, my grace still shrieked in agony, lost forever from the one I loved. When the other angels came near me, my pain spread through them, manifesting physically. They flinched in my presence, and I took some satisfaction in that.

Meaning well, they reasoned that there was nothing left on Earth for me, and I should return to Heaven. There, I could heal. Not to get over my heartsickness, but to be cured of it. They had never understood my love for Dean. They had never understood why I sacrificed so much for one little human. My pain was not a wound to be healed, but a sickness to be cured. For that alone, I would not have stayed.

But I was drawn to Earth anyway, because I knew Dean and Sam were there somewhere, and my only hope was to find them. It was an impossible task, and now seemed even more so without help from Sam. I had felt so confident before that I would recognize Dean’s soul again when I saw it, but I also dreaded walking just past him, never realizing he was so close. 

Every year that passed would draw him farther from me. His memories would fade, he would settle into his new life, and most terrifying of all, he may fall in love with another. Could Dean love someone as deeply as we loved each other? Could he need them and love them so desperately, that he would sacrifice everything? I hoped not. But humans did that every day.

My resolve was fixed. I returned to Earth with an aching heart, and little hope, but the resolve that Dean had taught me. That I could not give up.

~

4 Years Later

Four years really isn’t all that much time. Or at least, I thought so once. When Dean was alive, time slipped by. One moment, I was pulling him out of Hell, and the next, he was old, and wrinkled, and too tired to live anymore. My time with Dean was a blip in a very long existence.

But my time without Dean dragged on. I would blink, and only a millisecond would pass. An hour felt like an hour, or sometimes even longer. I kept a careful calendar because otherwise, I would have lost track of all the years, or the few years anyway. I was shocked after ages of searching, hitting cities, and towns and little farm houses, that only a few weeks had passed instead of a few years. 

The only reprieve was distraction. For a few seconds, I would not think about Dean, and peace would settle in me. Purpose gave me good distraction, and Dean’s purpose was my choice. I did not hunt specifically, but when the supernatural came across my path, I did not shirk my responsibility. I developed a new reputation, couched in rumors and whispers of a man in a trench coat with a wealth of languages and lore that he was eager and willing to share. I made a few steady contacts whom I hunted with, and fewer still who had my phone number. Terrence Glover was one. 

A year ago, he had called me, connected through other hunter friends to help him with a job. When I arrived at his house I was greeted at the door by his five year old daughter, Shayla. As soon as I saw her, I dropped to my knees and touched her face, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Frantically, I searched into her soul, bright, gleaming, glittery thing that it was, it almost hurt me to look so intensely. The girl, rather than be perturbed, instead giggled, making her soul sparkle more brightly and making me swallow harder. She looked like Dean, not in her looks, no. She was female to his male, black to his white, brown eyed to his green. Every physical attribute was the exact opposite, but her soul bore almost every resemblance.

While her father talked shop, I investigated her soul, checking every angle, hope rising and crashing with every turn. At one angle, it was Dean exactly, at another, it was just any other soul, the resemblance gone like a trick of light. After spending hours with her on my periphery, I was finally satisfied, though crushingly so, that she was not Dean. Subdued, I helped Terrence with his hunt and went on my way. Any time I reconnected with him, if Shayla passed by, I would snap my head around, thinking I’d caught a glimpse of Dean at last, only to be reminded again and again, that it wasn’t him. 

I helped Terrence on many hunts, but one was the most important. Something in a river was killing people, expert swimmers, campers, fishermen, anyone close enough to the water got dragged in, chewed up, and spit out. Local authorities knew something was up, but were running on wild animal theories. Terrence knew better, but wasn’t sure what he was handling, so he called me.

When I arrived at his house, Shayla still made my breath catch, and it was always an effort to look away from her, stop checking to see if she was Dean. Terrence led me away into his workroom, where he had piles of local lore and recent newspapers on the incidents in town, but Shayla followed, tugging gently on my coat if I ignored her for too long. 

“Nothing in local lore is pointing to anything,” Terrence started, having long given up on keeping Shayla out of his work room. She’d grow up to be a hunter if he wanted her to or not. “No suspicious deaths or anything like that, so it’s probably not a ghost. The killings look like all kinds of ugly things, kappas, kelpies, adaros. Can’t narrow it down just from the wounds on the vics.”

“The victims are all male, young, fairly attractive,” I pointed out after looking at the pictures of the victims, before they were killed. “Not many monsters are that specific. You’re probably looking at a naiad or something similar. They can get violent sometimes.”

“Naiad? How do you kill those?” Terrence asked, pulling a book off his shelf to check his lore. I searched through my own memory, vast with monsters and creatures, and all their weaknesses. No hunter journal could compete with my perfect recollection.

“Stake of ash through the heart, or decapitation.” 

“My book says elm,” Terrence said, with a little doubt. I looked at him, squinting and frowning that he would doubt me. “All right, Ash,” he amended. “When have you been wrong? You oughta write all this stuff down so the rest of us can use it.” 

“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll head to the river now. You should be able to lure her out.”

“Well, one of us sure will,” Terrence said, his eyes rolling up and down my body. It suddenly occurred to me that Terrence wasn’t very attractive by traditional standards. He was heavy set, stocky, short. His ears stuck out a bit, as did his chin. His unshaven face might have looked dangerously attractive if he kept his neck smooth, but all in all, he was not very good looking. I often paid too much attention to human souls to notice their bodies, and his shone brightly like a righteous man. I could see where his daughter got it from. 

We took the Impala at Terrence’s request. She’d been admired jealously even when Dean had her, and as she grew older, the admiration grew. As the years went by, she became more conspicuous, less common, and added to my mysterious reputation. The greatest mystery being how I kept her running so smoothly, and passing ever more demanding emissions tests. Dean would probably kill me to know how much mojo I worked on his car.

Down by the river, Terrence had his stake and stayed out of sight while I traipsed as obliviously as I could by the water’s edge, hoping the naiad would find me attractive enough. And for once, everything seemed to be going as planned. I could hear the flow of the water, then a louder rushing sound, and then a seething, angry hiss. I turned to the water, masking my face with surprise and horror toward the naiad as she made her appearance – skin algae green, nails long and sharp, teeth like fangs – she was not the lovely water nymph the Greeks spoke of, but a man-eater. She lunged for my ankles to drag me into the water, and I put up only token protests, using hardly any of my true strength to resist her, but enough to keep her from pulling me under before Terrence had a chance to strike.

Finally, while she was distracted with me, Terrence leapt from his hiding place, stake brandished and aimed for her heart. With a terrifying yell, he thrust the stake in… and completely missed. The naiad shrieked in pain as the stake went between her ribs, but pulled it loose to toss into the water. She threw me aside and went after Terrence, dragging him into the water with furious speed.

“Terrence!” I yelled, watching as he was pulled under too fast for me to follow. I knelt by the water, panicked on what to do. The stake was gone, the naiad had sunk. I could follow Terrence with my grace and feel him struggling to get free, to get oxygen, to live. But he was beyond human reach. There was no way to save him without using my grace. I knew I couldn’t go back to Shayla and tell her that her father had died.

My mind made up, I dove into the water after the naiad, surprising her and grabbing her with one hand, and Terrence with the other. I hauled her up to the surface, threw her to the ground, and with a touch to her forehead, burned the life out of her, her shriek of agony cut off by a quick death. For a moment, I was dizzy. I didn’t use my grace so garishly very often anymore, so it was a rush. However, the click of a gun brought me to my senses quickly enough, and I turned around to see the barrel of Terrence’s gun.

“What are you?” Terrence asked, his voice rough and weak from being held under water, but carrying all the betrayal and fear he could muster when he looked at me.

“I’m an angel,” I said. “And I’m still your friend. Always have been.”

“Your kind ain’t no friend of ours. Apocalypse, civil wars, raining angels and vessels; I’ve heard all the stories of your kind.”

“My name is Castiel,” I said, saying my real name for the first time in years. Just as hunters knew the names Sam and Dean Winchester, they knew of their angel ally, Castiel. For this reason, I never used my real name, preferring anonymity when dealing with hunters and everyone else. 

Terrence hesitated, the firm grip on his gun loosening for a moment, before tightening again as disbelief and distrust returned. It hurt to watch a friend do this, though I understood it. I stood up and Terrence shook his gun at me, making me frown.

“I’m sorry I had to lie to you, but don’t worry, you won’t see me again,” I turned to go, contemplating using my wings, but I’m glad I didn’t.

“Wait,” Terrence said, his voice unsure, though there was a hint of bravery in his voice, and defiance, his mark as a righteous man, the thing that had made him as good a friend as I could manage. I turned back slowly. His gun was down, though still in his hand. “Your kind hasn’t been spotted in decades. If you’re really who you say you are, you’ll tell me if there’s some trouble we should know about.”

“No. It’s only me. Heaven is not involved.”

“What’re you doing on Earth then?” Terrence asked, his curiosity evident on his face, softened from the interrogation of a hunter, to the concern of a friend. I hesitated, a number of words on my lips, to blow him off, to lie, to tell the truth. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, if anything at all. I thought it might be best to leave and not see Terrence or Shayla again. 

“Dean Winchester died,” I said.

“Yeah, few years ago. We all heard about it. Isn’t he…” Terrence pointed upward vaguely, his silence pushing for a little more information.

“He was reincarnated. I need to find him.”

Terrence nodded with understanding as he put his gun away. “What’re you gonna do when you find him?”

“I thought I would take him back to Heaven with me, but he’s getting so old now… that might not be possible. He’d be about Shayla’s age. You know, she looks like him,” I said smiling wistfully.

“My daughter looks like an old white dude?” Terrence said, looking comically offended.

“Not her features, of course not. But her soul. I thought she might be Dean when I first saw her.”

“And if she had been Dean…?”

“I… I might have taken her,” I said hesitantly. “I didn’t know you so well then. I wouldn’t have cared if it hurt you, so long as I could have him back.”

“And if you find him tomorrow, with some other parents you don’t know at all?”

I was silent for a while. This question came up in my head more and more often now. Dean would be six already. My original plan to switch his soul would not work. A fresh soul in such an old body would never take, and the parents would notice the drastic change. A hunter might even get involved if the case seemed weird enough.

“I don’t know,” I finally confessed. Terrence touched my shoulder, and I was surprised and warmed by the friendly gesture. The sight of Terrence’s gun had worried me that I would lose someone else I cared for, more than the threat itself. But he was still talking to me, and offering some comfort. It was more than I had experienced in many years. Together we walked back to the car. I hesitated outside the doors because we were dripping wet. I almost reached for the towels in the back seat, but instead dried myself off with my grace, and then reached for Terrence as well. He was startled at first, but gave into it, nodding his thanks. We were silent until we got to the house, and I gestured for Terrence to go in, intending to part ways like I usually did after a hunt.

“Castiel,” he said, my name awkward and mumbled since he wasn’t used to it. “Why don’t you come in for a bit? I can make us a pot of coffee.”

“You know, I don’t need coffee. Or food… it’ll be nice not to have to eat and drink in front of you anymore. Everything tastes like molecules.”

“You don’t have many friends around, do you? I mean, people who know what you are.”

“No. I keep to myself.”

“How about a base camp? Where do you stay when you aren’t looking for Dean?” I gestured to the Impala, and Terrence nodded. “I really think you should come in. I think it would be good for you.”

“Thank you, but I should get on with my search.”

“You really think you’re gonna find him?”

“I have nothing else to think but that.”

Terrence frowned, leaned in closer to me and grabbed my arm. “No, don’t think that, man. You just gotta… you gotta. Please, just come inside. Stay a few days. Shayla really likes you, and you can help me with hunts…”

“Thank you,” I said firmly. “I know what you’re doing, and I appreciate it. But I need to go. Please call me if you need help with another hunt.”

“You know about my wife dying, right?” Terrence asked, still not releasing my arm. “Just, got in a stupid car accident with a drunk. Gone. I went crazy for months, wanting to bring her back, almost made a demon deal, too. It’s part of the grieving, looking for them. Wanting them back.”

“This is different. Dean isn’t-”

“I know,” Terrence said gently. “Everyone has it different. But, when it’s time, you come around here. You have a place here and a friend.”

“Thank you, Terrence,” I said, as warmly as I could, even though his words chilled me. Mostly the ones he hadn’t said, about the time when I would give up on Dean and just move on, like everyone else did when they lost their loved ones. Terrence got out of the car, squeezing my arm one last time in that light act of affection that men allowed themselves. It was a little while before I was able to put the car into reverse, a hesitation that took just a bit too long, and wracked me with guilt for doubting even for a moment, that I could give up on Dean. My search continued.


	3. Chapter 3

Eight years since I lost sight of Sam, and without Dean it was tiresome. Sometimes, I wondered if it would be better knowing he was completely gone, never to be seen again, and I could forget about him and move on. Other times I was hungry with hope for him, knowing it was the only thing keeping me alive, and without that hope, there would be nothing left for me.

I focused mainly on hunting for Dean and Sam, looking for that glimmer of recognition in children all over the world. By then they would be about 8 and 10, and most likely siblings again. Though perhaps they would be cousins or some other relation. I dreaded most that they would be friends, who could be drawn together at any point in their life, maybe even many years from now. If I found Sam first, I would have to wait even longer to find Dean. It was maddening.

I continued hunting. Helping my contacts, avoiding Terrence’s invitations to a home as best I could. It was an unwanted distraction from my mission, but I couldn’t stand to imagine Dean’s disappointment if he knew I had let innocent people die. It had always been his greatest annoyance about getting old. He couldn’t kill the monsters himself anymore, and mentoring young hunters was barely any comfort. So I carried on for him, as he would have wanted, and the hunts brought me all over the world as much as my search did. 

Often, I visited places again and again, fearful that I would have missed Dean or Sam the first time around. I stared intently at children, while their parents kept nervous and wary eyes on me, seeking that little glimmer of recognition. My heart would thud around in my chest wildly when I thought I recognized something, but then crash down again, wearier than before when it was not them. I had not learned my lesson from Shayla.

My rounds brought me once more to a park in Denver, Colorado. Like so many before, it was familiar, and even some of the children were as well. But populations shifted, parents had different days off, so I needed to check again and again. But I worried that the playgrounds wouldn’t be a viable place to look for much longer. Dean and Sam were getting a little old for the swings and slides that much younger children played on. And then I thought of many more years from now, when I would be at playgrounds again, looking for Sam and Dean and the children they may have had. But I pushed thoughts like that away. 

I’d been in the park for almost an hour, and I’d learned through experience that an hour was about the threshold of time that parents would allow a lone, older male to hang around a park by himself watching children play. It was about time to head off. There was another park a few miles away that I wanted to check before it got too late.

As I stood to go, a baseball rolled up and smacked me soundly in the shoe. I bent down to scoop it up, watching as a little boy with a baseball glove scurried over to collect it. He was tawny haired and freshly freckled from the sun, and missing a few teeth toward the back. I reached out to hand him the ball.

“Thanks, mister,” the boy said with a smile.

When I heard his voice, I dropped the ball. He was close enough to catch it though, and gave me a weird look as I stared at him wildly, my heart thudding in my chest.

“Dean, hurry up!” another little boy called from a few yards away. My head snapped up toward the smaller, younger boy with light brown hair and just a little bit of baby fat around his cheeks and arms. 

“Yeah, Sam,” the little boy, named Dean, hollered over his shoulder, without taking his eyes off me. Big, bright, curious green eyes. He stared at me a moment longer, opened his mouth like he was going to say something important, but then he didn’t and turned away. He ran back to his little brother, a boy he’d called Sam, and walked him away. Little Sam complained, wanted to throw the ball around more, but Dean threw one last look over his shoulder at me, and then told his brother they had to go home.

And just like that, beyond all odds, I’d found Dean and Sam again. Brothers again. Dean and Sam again. Freckles, and green eyes, protective Dean again. And stupid, stunned, unbelieving idiot that I was, I hadn’t been able to say a single word to him. I’d imagined the scene over and over again, fantasizing each word, and how Dean would react. In each one, I knew he would recognize me, like waking up from a dream. He would know my name, and he would smile, and everything would be all right. Instead, he was climbing into a sky blue mini-van with his brother and mother, chatting and smiling, and already forgetting the weird man in the park. 

I stood stunned for a few more moments, and then I snapped back to attention and followed them. The mini-van pulled into the driveway of a small, single-story ranch. Invisible, I stood on the lawn and watched as Dean and Sam spilled out of the car alongside their mother. I still almost couldn’t believe it, and stared intently at their souls, looking for any mistake. But it was them, their shiny bright souls almost exactly how I remembered them, but for a few small changes. And masked around those so-similar souls, were achingly familiar little bodies. Like the souls had created shells for them to make them easier to find and recognize. It wasn’t unheard of to see souls reincarnate with similar features, the same chins and noses and eyes repeating themselves over and over again throughout history. But the names were a ridiculous coincidence. How could they have managed to end up with the same names?

Still invisible, I followed the family into their house. The father was there to greet them, looking freshly returned from work. Suit jacket draped on a chair, tie loosened at his throat. He tussled Sam’s hair as he ran by, and reached for his wife to kiss her.

“Deirdre, how were the boys?” he asked, and I sighed with relief, terrified that her name might be Mary, or his might be John, and somehow destiny was going to start all over again in some horrible nightmare. But no. I scanned their thoughts. His name was Calvin. She wasn’t a hunter. He wasn’t descended from the Men of Letters. Their bloodlines weren’t even acceptable as angelic vessels – not even a cherub. They were perfectly, completely ordinary.

For a few years, I had still hoped to find Dean soon enough that I could switch out his soul without too much damage or disruption, or really, I didn’t care what damage or disruption I caused. But Terrence changed that. As I looked around at the small, cozy home Deirdre and Calvin had made for their two boys, that desire disappeared completely. As soon as Dean got his memories back, he would chastise me. Sam certainly would. 

Dean and Sam had retreated to their shared room after they’d put away their shoes and baseball equipment. It was a small room made smaller by twin beds and a large desk they had to share. The walls were plastered with their interests and achievements, science fair ribbons and piles of summer reading collected on Sam’s side of the room. Dean had his wrestling trophies on a shelf and a stack of student of the month awards pinned to a cork board. I even saw some art supplies that they both shared.

This was a childhood Dean and Sam had always wished for, and who was I to take it away from them? All I had to offer were memories of pain and death, and while I offered love as well, they had that in abundance. So I took Sam’s advice when he first suggested the plan. I would wait, and watch, and when Dean was old enough, I would let him choose which life he wanted.

~

Deirdre and Calvin were surprised when their neighbors, the Vortens, suddenly put their house up for sale. But Michaela had come into a lot of money from an aunt she didn’t remember, so they were putting a down payment on a bigger house on the other side of town. She promised they’d stay in touch, but Deirdre was quite certain they wouldn’t.

I had no intention of sitting by as an invisible guardian angel to watch over Dean and Sam until they were old enough to regain their memories. So I bought the house next door, and moved in. With that position, I could see Dean, and get to know him, and be close to him. Perhaps we could even be friends if I could get his parents to trust me. I was still annoyed that single men were so suspicious around small children. But I had a plan.

The easiest way into any suburbanite heart, was a good old-fashioned barbecue. For a month, I’d barely exchanged a few waves and awkward hellos with my neighbors while I set up house. But then I sent out cards with cheerful language inviting my neighbors over for a party to celebrate the summer. I couldn’t have cared less if no one in the neighborhood showed up, except for Deirdre, Calvin, and their two sons. I’m not sure what I would have done if they didn’t come.

Fortunately they did, but then, so did half the street. I was ever grateful for Dean’s love of barbecues, which he then passed on to me. As I worked the grill, keeping the burgers and dogs from burning, I got lost in memories of many years ago, after Dean and I had bought a house, but before he retired. Hunters passed through often, and when they did, we would barbecue for them, even when it was snowing out. Dean would don his coat, and slip his snow boots on, dash out, flip the burgers, and then dash back in – all for the smoky grilled meat he adored. 

I liked it best when we barbecued alone though, with the yard to ourselves with no neighbors for miles. While the grill smoked away, we would recline in our lounge chairs, and then in just one chair together. We would kiss languidly, building up heat slowly like the coals on the fire. Dean would roll his hips against me, and I could feel the hard length of his cock through his jeans. I would reach to unbutton them, slide my hand inside and-

“Mr. Winchester, can I have a burger with no cheese?”

“Huh?” I looked up from the grill, dragged out of my memories with some embarrassment when I remembered where I was, and then saw that Dean was standing in front of me expectantly, holding up a paper plate with an empty bun on it. “No cheese? You sure?” I asked to clarify, because hadn’t Dean always loved cheese on his burgers?

“No thanks. I don’t like it,” little Dean said, scrunching up his nose with disgust. I nodded dumbly and selected one of the naked patties and slid it onto his bun. Dean turned to walk away, but bumped into his mother who was walking up with Calvin, Sam in tow as well.

“Did you introduce yourself to Mr. Winchester?” Deirdre asked Dean. When he shook his head, she nudged him forward.

“Hi, my name is Dean Baker,” Dean said robotically. This was clearly a speech his parents enforced. I couldn’t help but smile at his lackluster performance. “This is my younger brother Sam, and my parents Deirdre and Calvin. We live next door. Can I go now?”

“Thank you, Dean,” Deirdre said, sarcastic, but also pleased. He scampered off and Sam quickly followed to eat and play with the other children. “We try so hard to make sure he’s polite.”

“He seems like a good boy,” I said plainly. “And thank you for coming. It’s nice to meet the neighbors.”

“No, thank you for inviting us!” Deirdre said. “Everyone’s been dying to learn about you, so this was very well planned.”

“I didn’t want to leave anyone wondering,” I said, smiling happily. “So, before you have to ask, I work from home running my own security consultation business. You may see people coming in and out sometimes so I want you to know they’re agents and colleagues.” In a way, this was not a complete lie. Setting up a center for hunters to call in the FBI or CIA was sort of like security. And the people who would come by certainly were colleagues and agents of a sort. I just had to be sure no one ever showed up bloody or covered in ectoplasm. 

“Must be nice working from home,” Calvin said. “I’m a manager over at the Costco, and Deirdre’s an EMT. Haven’t worked out how to do either of those remotely though.”

“Those seem like tough hours with two kids,” I said, making it sound casual, and not showing my concern that Dean and Sam were left alone and unprotected sometimes.

“It can be, but we manage. Michaela, the family that used to live here, she would watch the boys sometimes.”

I wanted to chime in desperately that I would be happy to babysit the boys for them any time they needed, even if it was just to go out and have some fun together, but I calmed myself and just gave an understanding nod. However, I was not completely able to resist one niggling question.

“Sam and Dean… how did you come up with those names?”

“I know, right?” Deirdre said excitedly, and I was momentarily thrown off that she didn’t find my question odd. “They’re super old-fashioned, but I am telling you, when Dean popped out, he just looked like a Dean. We didn’t even have the name on our lists. It was weird. And Sam was the same way. We were so set on Aiden, but then he popped out with his little Sam face and we couldn’t resist.”

“It’s not even short for Samuel,” Calvin added. “He’s Sam on his birth certificate. We couldn’t be too cruel. But I tell you what? I’ve seen them both get teased about their names on the playground, but they just ignore it. I hope they keep that attitude in high school, too.”

“They sound like good boys. They should be fine.”

We chatted a bit longer, but I wasn’t paying too much attention. The anomaly of their names was answered, at least somewhat. It fit with the fact that even in their new bodies, they looked like Sam and Dean when they’d been young. There were differences, yes. The shade of green in their eyes matched Deirdre’s perfectly, they had their father’s nose. Just here and there, the features had been tweaked, but not enough. So, like the shells of their bodies were easy to recognize, they’d also managed to retain their names. 

As the evening wound down, and everyone headed home, for the first time in many years I felt at peace. I watched as Dean walked away with his family, a little wistful, but happier than I had been in a long time. He wasn’t mine yet, but I had found him.

~

A few weeks passed and I saw little of Dean, except through the windows of my house, but I took pleasure in it. I watched him play in the yard with Sam, teaching him but also teasing him during their games. I could see into the windows of the house sometimes as he set the table for dinner, watched TV in the living room, or helped with chores around the house. But I had no opportunity to see him up close or talk to him.

I myself had to keep busy. I had an illusion of humanity to keep up, and that meant going to the grocery store once a week, throwing away the food I didn’t eat and setting the trash on the curb, and tending to my yard. The yard had always been Dean’s favorite part about home ownership, and it was something I had learned to cherish as well through his love of it. It was only during the most onerous tasks that he would ask me to use my grace, and teasingly I would refuse. I liked to watch him sweat and grunt and bend over in his tight fitting jeans. And I knew the work made him happy, too. 

The yard I had now was much smaller in comparison to our old house, but it still had work that needed doing. The large oak tree in the back had dropped a number of branches during the last rain storm, and I needed to collect them, break them up, tie them into bundles and leave them on the curb for trash pick-up. Tedious work, but it allowed me to daydream of hot afternoons nestled in the hammock, swaying gently and sipping cold beers, until Dean came up and told me to help him rake the leaves, or clean the gutters, or weed the vegetable garden. I would try to tempt him into the hammock with me, and about half the time I would succeed, and the other half I would have to wait for my reward. 

“Hey Mr. Winchester.”

I was snapped out of my reverie again and looked up to see Dean peering through the bushes that separated our lawns. “Well, hello. Dean was it?” I asked, as always trying not to look too eager, even though I was swallowing through a lump in my throat.

“Yep. Need some help with your yard work?”

“That’d be very kind of you,” I said steadily. My heart was racing because I would now have a chance to chat with Dean and spend some time with him, and he offered all on his own out of the goodness of his heart.

“I usually charge the neighbors fifty bucks, but since you’re new, I’ll help you for forty.”

“Forty? That’s… fair,” I said. OK, so maybe not out of the goodness of his heart. But I’d still get to spend the afternoon with him and get to know him better and he came all on his own, so I couldn’t help but hope something had drawn him to me. “Can you gather the sticks and bring them over for me to bundle up?”

Dean nodded and got to work, and he didn’t dawdle either. He moved quickly and easily, like someone who had done this sort of work a lot. It was easy to imagine him charming his neighbors with his easy-going smile and freckled cheeks, just to get them to pay his exorbitant fee. He quickly returned to my side with his arms packed with sticks and branches and set them beside me. With some curiosity, he watched me tie off a bundle with a length of string.

“Where’d you learn that kind of knot?” Dean asked.

Tying up demons, I thought to myself, but instead said, “The boy scouts.”

“Show me?” he asked, and I obliged, showing him the knot only two times before he had it and started bundling the sticks himself. In under an hour, we had the yard all tidied up and the bundles set out front in neat piles. From my wallet I pulled out fifty dollars instead of our agreed forty.

“Because you worked so quickly,” I said as I handed it over. Dean grinned, not looking at all surprised that I had given him a little extra, then went back to his home, promising to come back again if I needed any more help. I happily agreed to those terms and went back into my house.

About an hour later, there was a knock on my front door and I was surprised to find Calvin there looking awkward and embarrassed, and holding a few bills in his hand.

“I’m really sorry… I think Dean scammed you a bit earlier,” he said, pushing the money into my hand. “He really shouldn’t be asking for more than twenty dollars. Maybe thirty if it’s a big job. I don’t know what’s come over him. I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, trying not to feel personally offended that Dean had tricked me. He didn’t actually know me, so it wasn’t personal. Though I was a little concerned that Dean might have held on to some old habits from his previous life. “I didn’t realize it was too much.”

“No it’s…” Calvin paused a moment, unsure if he should continue. “I think Dean overheard Deirdre and I talking about money. Ever since then he’s been all over the neighborhood doing odd jobs, gathering bottles for deposit, just hoarding cash like crazy. I think he’s gotten it into his head that we’re struggling more than we are.”

“It’s admirable,” I said, and Calvin looked surprised. “He cares about his family. Not many children his age do.”

“Still not right to take money from our neighbors.”

“Tell you what,” I said, pushing the money back into Calvin’s reluctant hand. “You take this back and put it into a little account for Dean, Christmas money, college, whatever. Next time he comes around, I’ll pay him the proper fee, and you keep adding to that. He’s got a good work ethic, so let’s put it to good use.”

“You’re very understanding,” Calvin said, slowly putting the money into his pocket. “Thank you.”

“Dean’s a good boy. He didn’t mean any harm. You don’t have to worry about sending him over here to work.”

Calvin, looking grateful and relieved left. I considered that day a double victory, getting closer to Dean, and starting a new friendship with Calvin as well.

~

I had a great number of responsibilities after Dean died, besides finding him and Sam. Making sure their library was taken care of, maintaining the contacts with their hunter friends, and living up to Dean’s ideal of helping people, killing things – the family business. But my greatest care was Baby.

For a long time I had resisted calling the Impala by her nickname, but Dean wore me down, until she was part of my family, as she had always been for Dean and Sam. I remember hours of work Dean put into Baby, and teaching me how to take care of her as well. Changing the oil, rotating the tires, washing and waxing her – all of it had to be done by hand, no mojo allowed. So I learned to dote on her as much as Dean had.

After he passed, this didn’t change, but became a stronger impulse. Poetic, really. I couldn’t hold on to Dean, so I held on to Baby. I tried as best I could to maintain her like Dean said, but with time, it became harder and harder to keep Baby in running order. Replacing parts became more difficult, until finally, I couldn’t find just one piece. Baby lay dormant for six months while I searched for this one vital part of her, tiny and inconsequential as it seemed, but so necessary. 

Finally, when all sources had been exhausted, and the only option left was to leave her to rust, I gave in to the unspeakable. I laid hands on her hood, like I had on Dean and Sam’s foreheads so many times, and I healed her. Just in that one tiny part. Nowhere else. And as she shuddered back to life, like taking a long wanted breath, my relief outweighed my guilt. There were only two more times when I had to give up on Dean’s decree, but without my grace running through Baby, like it had through Dean, she wouldn’t be running, and I would have lost everything. I could only hope that Dean would forgive me.

So it was with great solemnity that I brought Baby out of the garage on Sundays to give her a wash and a tune up. I still washed her by hand, and then gave her a careful once over with just my human abilities. Then, I would check her with my grace to see if there were any problems I couldn’t see on my own. With a frown, I saw some rust starting to grow under her paint. I’d need to fix that soon, or it’d get out of control, but I could manage by hand. I patted Baby lovingly before turning to get my bucket of soapy water and soft cloths.

Unless it was unbearably cold, Dean always washed Baby by hand. Only in the grittiest winter days would he take her to a car wash. I remember one such brisk autumn afternoon when he was out there, teeth chattering slightly as he washed the car with water which had quickly turned cold. I took pity and while Dean was distracted, I stood behind him and slid my hands up under his shirt. He squawked with surprise at first, but then let out a groan of relief as warmth washed through his body, fighting back the chill of the air. He hummed happily and kept washing while I held my hands on him, keeping him warm.

When the car was rinsed, Dean slid his hands over mine under his shirt, rucking it up higher. “Can you keep me warm, or do we have to go inside?” he asked, turning to face me and pressing our bodies closer together. His clothes were soaked and clinging to his skin, straining against some areas more so than others.

“I can always keep you warm,” I said, and pulled the backseat door open to push Dean inside. He’d just washed Baby, so there was no way he’d want to fuck against her sparkling clean exterior. The back seat was cramped, but we’d made do before, and even with Dean’s wet clothes clinging to his skin, we made headway. Soon, I didn’t even need my grace to keep him warm as our body heat filled the car and fogged up the glass, an indecent signal to anyone who might approach that we were-

“Wow, Mr. Winchester, is that your car?”

My head popped up from the other side of the car to see Dean and Sam, both with wide-eyed admiration of Baby as they crossed into my lawn. After flowing some diffusing grace through my body, I stood up to greet them.

“What kind of car is it? How old is it? Where’d you get it from?” Dean asked with rapid-fire curiosity, and though Sam wasn’t saying anything, he was also looking up at me with curious eyes, waiting for my response. Their attraction to Baby shouldn’t have surprised me. Over and over again, they showed signs of their old lives, and Baby was just one more. 

“She’s a 1967 Chevrolet Impala. She’s been in my family for a very long time.”

“You mean they built it in 1967?” Sam piped in. “That means it’s like, a hundred years old.”

“Yes, she,” I emphasized. Dean never liked Baby being called it. “And her name is Baby. She’s an old girl, but still good.”

“Can we help you wash it – her?” Dean asked eagerly, his fingers actually twitching in anticipation.

“No,” I said too quickly, and too harshly. The boys looked up at me with surprise, so I softened and smiled. “She’s very delicate. Maybe when you’re a bit older, you can wash her.”

Dean nodded mulishly in agreement, but he’d thank me once he got his memories back. My old Dean would kill me if he knew I let children touch his Baby. They’d probably scratch her paint, or use the wrong kind of soap, or something far worse. So no, I had to keep Dean away from his car for just awhile longer.

~

One year later

Sometimes, I felt like a villain, weaseling my way into Calvin and Deirdre’s trust for very ulterior motives. We’d had dinner several times, Calvin came over to drink beers and watch football games (Thank you Dean for teaching me about the game!), I’d helped fix Deirdre’s car so she wouldn’t have to take it into the shop. But it all paid off because once a week, when Deirdre and Calvin were both working late, Sam and Dean came to my house for homework and dinner. 

I hadn’t even needed to suggest the idea, my subterfuge was so great. Deirdre had approached me about it because she trusted me so much, and getting a babysitter once a week seemed like such a frivolous expense when they had such a good friend next door, whom the boys liked, and was so reliable. I’d smiled bashfully at the praise and accepted her plea, keeping back my own excitement.

Nervous as I’d been the first time I had Sam and Dean all to myself, my fears were allayed. I’d worried they’d be rambunctious, easily bored, and never do their homework, and thus ruin my chances of ever babysitting them again. But they came in cheerfully, if not a bit nervous themselves, and set up on my kitchen table. Dean first helped Sam with his homework before starting his own, pouring over his assignments more studiously than he’d ever tackled research.

Situations like this always made me wonder, was this a trait that came new with Dean’s reincarnation, or was this a skill he’d always had, but never nurtured? How much of him was my Dean, and how much of him was an entirely new human being? Thinking on these matters led to too many questions, and I brushed them from my thoughts as quickly as I could.

Finished with his homework, Sam would watch TV for a little while, but it could never hold his interest for very long. He was naturally curious, and would try to peek his head into my library, which was strictly off-limits for the both of them, and really, anyone who came into my house that wasn’t a hunter. All my lore and texts were in there, and I didn’t want the boys asking me why the books bound in monster skins felt weird. 

“Sam,” I chided gently when I saw he’d abandoned his seat in front of the TV and wandered to the closed sliding doors of my library. “Come help me in the kitchen.”

Distractions and activities helped keep Sam’s curiosity at bay, but he was getting more persistent. Even while he was ripping up salad (I wouldn’t let him use a knife yet) his mind was still where it shouldn’t be.

“What kind of books do you have in your library?” Sam asked. I never should have called it a library. I should have called it an office, and then Sam never would have been interested. That was one trait I wish he hadn’t held over from his past life.

“Security catalogs, regional law books, technical references,” I said, listing the titles off as boringly as I could to turn him off from the subject.

“Then how come I can’t go in?”

“Because I have a lot of delicate equipment in there-”

“Oh, you always say that! I’m not a baby. I’m not going to break anything.”

“Of course you won’t,” I said, handing Sam the chopped onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers for the salad. “But you still can’t go in.”

“Eww, onions! I hate onions,” Sam said, suitably disgusted and distracted enough – deliberately on my part – to place the onions very delicately on one side of the salad bowl away from the other acceptable vegetables that he would eat. 

“They’re good for you, Sam. Try to eat a few, OK?” I asked gently, but Sam shook his head furiously. He was by no means a picky eater, but he stood his ground on onions. I thought of it as a challenge to sneak them into his diet without him noticing. 

“They’re very good for your-” Just then the doorbell rang and all three of us looked up with curiosity. It was too early for Deirdre or Calvin to come home, and I couldn’t think of anyone else who would come over, but as I approached the door, my stomach sank with the assurance of who would be on the other side.

“Heya, Cas,” said Adrienne, a hunter that Terrence had introduced me to, and who helped me set up the phone lines for hunters to call. “Sorry to drop in unannounced, but my phone got eaten by a wendigo and – oh, hello!” Adrienne said quickly when she saw Sam trot over to the door, friendly and curious at the same time.

“This is Sam,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m babysitting him and his brother. Neighborhood kids. No interest in the security business, you know?”

“Yeah,” Adrienne said, gratefully picking up on my cue to cut the hunter talk. Most hunters knew not to come to my house unannounced. Terrence had been sure to tell everyone, but some came through out of desperation or ignorance anyway. Just, none had ever shown up while Sam and Dean were there. I had no intention of letting them know anything about the supernatural, or hunters, for as long as possible, so this put a few kinks in my plan.

“I just… I need a book? Terrence said you had it,” Adrienne said hopefully.

“Probably, just, hold on,” I said anxiously. “Sam, go into the kitchen, Dean, keep an eye on the stove. Yell if anything catches fire, OK?”

Without waiting for a response, I led Adrienne quickly to my library, unlocked the door, rushed her in, and then quickly shut the doors behind us. “What do you need?” I said gruffly.

“Sir Urqwood’s diary, the 1427 volume. I think I’m dealing with a-”

“Yes, yes, I know what’s in there,” I said, keeping my voice low. The kitchen wasn’t too far off from the library and I didn’t want the boys to hear anything. I scanned my shelves quickly, pulled out the book, and set up my scanner. 

“I might need the whole book, if there’s a chapter-”

“You need chapter 21 through 23, everything else is his experiments with smoking and eating leaves to get high,” I said briskly while I quickly scanned and printed the only pages with any supernatural significance to them. For Adrienne’s sake, I hoped she wasn’t actually dealing with what the pages entailed, because that was a nasty business. “Urqwood was a terrible researcher, never took notes properly, so even though it says fresh spring pine will work, it doesn’t. You need aged pine. And are you working with anyone? You should have a partner on this.”

“Yeah, Toni Gillette is in the car.”

“Gillette’s good,” I said as I handed over the papers, and then also, an old cell phone from a pile I kept in a desk drawer, charged and with all the appropriate contacts already put in. “Call if you run into trouble, but if you get hurt, go to St. Mary’s hospital and ask for Dr. Moira McClurken, she’ll help you. Do not come here.”

“Yes, sir,” Adrienne said, the apology clear in her voice, though the ‘sir’ seemed a little sarcastic. With her settled, I led her out of the library, opening the door, and finding Sam standing right where the crack was, and not even embarrassed that he’d been caught. He even had the gall to try looking around my legs, until I grabbed his shoulder and ushered him away while Adrienne closed the doors.

“Sam, what have I told you?”

“Who’s Sir Urqwood? Why do you need a diary from 1427? Isn’t that a long time ago?”

“That’s…” I could feel myself going pale. How much had Sam heard, and how much had he understood? “…Just what we call the manuals. 1427 just means the uh, issue number, you know?”

“How come your books look so old? Shouldn’t you have new books?”

“I’m… I’m just gonna go. Fix that security system,” Adrienne said, edging toward the door. I glared at her but let her go. I’d have to give Terrence a call later to send out an all-points bulletin about hunter etiquette in my house.

“Sometimes the old books are good too. Like, history books.”

“I like history books!” Sam said excitedly, and I groaned on the inside. No matter what I said, I could not turn Sam off from those books. Bribery was my only option. 

“I think dinner is ready now, and you know, I have some ice cream in the fridge for dessert. Cookies and cream is your favorite, right?”

“Yes,” Sam said cautiously, and I can see his little mind working, already too clever for his age. “Do I have to eat the onions in my salad?”

“No,” I said after a short pause, caught off guard by Sam’s bargaining techniques, and worrying about how clever he was getting. Sam nodded enthusiastically, his stomach outweighing his curiosity for the time being, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last.

~

One afternoon, while I was answering phones for my hunter contacts, ready to pretend to be the FBI if needed, my doorbell rang. I went to answer the door, already prepared to give a firm talking to whichever hunter would show up at my door unannounced after that incident with Adrienne. She’d sent a card as apology, as well as a suitably ancient text to add to my collection, so I had extended her some forgiveness. But apparently Terrence’s strongly worded email to everyone else hadn’t hit home.

I opened my door, the growl ready in my throat and then immediately swallowed it back when I saw Dean on my front step with a split lip and tears in his eyes. I ushered him in quickly, and sat him down on my couch.

“What happened?” I asked, smoothing my hands over his messy hair, putting it back to rights. On closer inspection, he had a number of scrapes and bruises, and when I checked with my grace, one of his teeth was loose. If I didn’t fix it, it would need replacing.

“I got… I got in a fight,” Dean said, sniffling slightly.

“Dean,” I said with a deep sigh, my tone light with reprimand. Would he never escape the violence? Not even in a new life and body? “Why were you fighting?”

“There were some eighth graders picking on a boy in my class. He got new shoes and they were trying to take them.”

“And you stopped them?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in surprise. Dean was small for his age, and the students even a year older had several pounds on him.

“Y-yeah…” Dean said, and I could see a little crinkle in his eye, just a spot of pride, but mostly masked by his own hurt and fear. “Am I gonna get in trouble? Mom doesn’t like fighting, even when me and Sam are just playing.”

“That’s up to your parents.”

“Do I have to tell them? I can say I fell down.”

“Don’t be afraid of being brave, Dean. It’s a wonderful quality,” I said gently, as I led Dean into the bathroom where I could tend to his wounds. “You should always help people when you can.” I sat Dean on the toilet lid and cleaned up the cut on his lip with antiseptic, making him hiss from the sting. Without him realizing it, I also healed his tooth, only enough so that it wouldn’t need replacing, but it would still hurt for a time. 

As I tended to Dean’s wounds, I remembered the many times I had tended to him in his past life. Often times with my grace, when he was at his worst, but just as often with the usual means that humans relied on, for small cuts and bruises. Dean didn’t want to go soft, and he was proud of the scars he earned. All except one.

“Don’t heal it,” Dean had said to me of the wide, jagged wound in his stomach, left behind by the claws of a shtriga. “Just wrap it. I’ll be OK.”

“You don’t need to suffer just because-” I started, trying to console him, but he cut me off, covering my mouth with his hand and shaking his head.

“Those kids are dead because of me,” Dean said, tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m not fast enough anymore, Cas. I couldn’t get that shtriga in time, and now he’s hiding again. Won’t pop up for another 15 years, and there’s 20 dead kids because of it. I shoulda sent a younger hunter.”

I could only nod, frustrated with my own inability to save the children. I could heal most wounds, but their life force was gone, swallowed by the shtriga with no way of returning it unless it was killed. I too ached, impotent as I watched the children in their comas silently slip away from crying parents. And I ached too because I hadn’t seen how old Dean was getting. Like with Terrence, I hadn’t notice Dean’s outside because his soul shined so brightly. As he got older, it grew purer and more righteous. I hadn’t noticed all the grey in his hair, the loss in his hearing, and the ache in his joints. I hadn’t realized he wouldn’t be fast enough to catch the shtriga while it was feeding, hitting it at just the right time when it was vulnerable. I too should have known someone younger was better for the job.

“I think this is it, Cas,” Dean said quietly, scrubbing away his tears and hissing as the movement tugged on his wound. “Time to hang up the shotgun and set up the phone lines.”

“You mean… retire?” I asked cautiously. The word was anathema to Dean, who had mocked and even scolded Sam when he retired a few years earlier, resigning himself to a golden age of research and support for the younger, more able-bodied hunters. 

“Yeah… thanks to you,” Dean said, his face softening just a little around a smile. “Never woulda made it this far without you taking care of me.” He leaned forward, bumping his head against mine. “What’d I ever do to deserve you?”

“Helped everyone you could,” I said.

“Was it enough? Did I save enough people?” Dean asked.

“You did,” I said as sincerely as I could, brushing Dean’s hair back from his face, where it was messy and sticky with blood. “You did more than enough. You can stop now.”

“Mr. Winchester?” A quiet, unsure voice dredged me from my memories. This one was also bloody and freckled, and filled with a soul starting to sparkle into a life I had loved so dearly. “You OK? Why are you crying?”

I wiped hastily at my face, scolding myself for my lack of control. “You reminded me of someone. He was brave like you, but he never realized how good he was.”

“Do you think I’m good?” Young Dean asked me.

“Very much so, which is why you should tell your mother. Maybe she will get mad, but you must remember you are good, OK?”

“OK. Thanks Mr. Winchester,” Dean said. He stood up and wrapped his arms around my waist, hugging me tightly. I hugged him back as well, encasing his head in my much larger hands, and holding him close. Carefully I watched for his cues and let him go when he wanted to be released, led him back to my front door and sent him home to confess to his parents and await their judgment. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t hold on to him for too long, couldn’t keep him too close. He was like my Dean in so many ways, but he was not my Dean, not yet.

~

I always felt just a little awkward around Calvin and Deirdre, like if I said one wrong word, they would find out my secret. Every time they reached out to me, I was surprised and relieved, my cover held for just one more day. If I could have, I would have avoided them all together, and focused most of my energy on Dean and Sam. But while Deirdre was easy enough to avoid with her ever-changing EMT schedule, Calvin wanted to be best friends. And it wasn’t that I disliked him, in fact it was the opposite and I hated lying to him. But it was hard to tell someone that you were an angel and in love with their under-aged son. 

What drew me to like Calvin and Deirdre is that they also bore the marks of righteousness. I could see why Dean had been born to them. They were naturally brave and hard-working, though the mundane rigor of life had dulled their shine a little bit. Deirdre’s flared up when she came home from a shift having saved someone’s life, but Calvin’s job didn’t suit him. He could have been a fireman liked he dreamed of when he was a little boy. Instead though, he turned his bravery to fatherhood. He didn’t want to risk his family losing him in a fire. 

Calvin took fatherhood seriously, and filled many of the traditional stay-at-home parent roles in the family. He cooked more often than Deirdre did, kept the house tidy, and helped the boys with their homework. When Deirdre came home from an over-time shift, he kept the boys entertained, quietly, on the other side of the house, or outside, so Deirdre could rest.

When the boys were in school, Deirdre was at work, and he had an unexpected day off, he’d usually call me over to watch whatever sport was in season, eat heart-burn inducing food, and drink enough beer to create a steady, non-obtrusive buzz.

“He was safe!” Calvin shouted at the screen. It was early summer and baseball was in season. The Colorado Rockies were playing against the Chicago Cubs, the best team in the league for the last decade or so, and understandably, the Rockies were getting killed.

I watched the replay and I could see the Rockies runner was out, no questions asked, but I grumbled along with Calvin, because that’s what you do when your team is losing. Dean had taught me that. Never mind that I could see down to the molecules whether the runner was tagged first, or touched the base first. 

“Might see Dean out there someday,” Calvin said, gesturing to the screen as he took a pull from his beer. “Coach says he’s got some talent. If he puts himself into it, maybe he could go professional with it.”

“Maybe,” I said. I’d seen Dean play. He had some skill, sure, but he didn’t have the passion for baseball, or any other sport either. Calvin got just as excited around football season and basketball season when it came to his sons. Dean liked to play, but they were just games for him. 

“I did basketball in college, but never much good at it,” Calvin said wistfully. “But Dean could, if he works on it.” 

“I’m not sure if that’s really what he’s interested in,” I said very cautiously. I’d seen Calvin in the backyard practicing with Dean. Dean was game for a while, but I could always sense he wanted to go in before his father was done with him. But he would keep at it, still smiling and trying to do his best, like his father encouraged. 

“Yeah… maybe not,” Calvin said, and surprised me with a laugh. “Nice little daydream though, right? My son, the major league baseball player! What dad doesn’t dream about that though, right?”

“But isn’t that why you push him so hard at practice? I assumed you wanted him to follow in your foot-steps,” I said, confused by Calvin’s quick turnaround.

“I push him because I don’t want him being half-assed about it, or anything,” Calvin said steadily. “I don’t care if he doesn’t like English, he’s not bringing home a C. And he doesn’t have to be a major league player, but if he’s going to sign-up for little league, then he’s going to do his best at it, just like anything else he decides to do.”

“What if he decides not to do any sports?” I asked.

“Fine, then he has even less of an excuse for a C,” Calvin said, trying to sound tough and hard, but the imagery breaking as he grinned at the end of it. “You have a hard-ass for a dad?”

“Me?” I asked, thinking of my father whom I had never seen and had no association with. But then my mind turned to another father, one I also hadn’t ever met, but was still a presence in Dean’s previous life for many years. “Maybe, a bit.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna be a hard-ass for the boys to do well,” Calvin said, emphasizing the last word. “But I don’t care what they do well in. It should be their choice, you know?”

“Yeah, it should be,” I said. Calvin didn’t realize it, but my esteem for him grew greatly that day. Once again I was relieved by the family Dean had fallen in to, amazed at how different it could be from the one he was given in his last life. I couldn’t have chosen a better family for him.


	4. Chapter 4

When Dean was missing, the years had dragged by, but suddenly, they were flying away again and Dean was 14 and halfway through his first year of high school. He’d already started growing, and was certain to hit a major growth spurt within the next year. Already he came up to my shoulders, though he was still all gangly elbows and knees. I wondered if Sam would shoot past him again, towering over his older brother like he had before, and if Dean would be as annoyed about it this time as well. 

Most notable of Dean’s changes was his growing interest in cars, specifically in Baby. He tinkered with his parents’ cars, and was even taking an automotive shop. But it wasn’t until he turned out an A+ on his final exam that I would allow him to even look under Baby’s hood, and even then, only under the strictest supervision. It was months before I would let him actually touch anything. 

But Dean was reverent around Baby, gentle and loving with her as he had been in his previous life, and I knew that had to be bleed from before. Or so I hoped. Because if the love for his car could bleed into his new life, draw him inexplicably to her, then maybe that explained why he was always in my yard and house. Some vague, ghost like memory, barely remembered and drawing him to me. I could only hope.

“Hey Cas,” Dean said, the polite Mr. Winchester dropped almost the second he got into high school. The first time he’d laid it on me with his cheeky grin, I did a double take, thinking for a moment he’d gotten his memories back, but was dismally disappointed to realize Dean was just pushing the boundaries of authority. “You know I can get my learner’s permit next year, right?”

“Mmmhmm,” I said, not really listening as I looked under Baby’s hood, sussing out the source of that noise she was starting to make, a mix between a growl and a hiss, and wondering if I could fix it manually, or if I would have to rely on more grace to keep her running. 

“And I was thinking I could practice driving with Baby since-”

“No,” I said firmly and quickly before Dean could weasel out a single rational argument.

“Oh, c’mon. I’ll be careful. You know how much I love Baby.”

“Absolutely not. Not even when you have your license,” I said, my voice gentle but serious. I didn’t doubt Dean’s sincerity in his love for Baby, but I also knew better than to trust a teenaged boy with a classic muscle car. Once he got his memories back, he’d thank me.

“How’m I supposed to practice?” Dean whined.

“Save up some money with that yard work scam of yours and buy a used Toyota. They’re very reliable.”

Dean scrunched up his face in disgust, and I wasn’t sure if it was the thought of a functional Japanese car, my reference to his continued overcharging for yard work, or that I was teasing him. I grinned back at him though and buried my head under the hood again.

“How’s Sam doing in middle school?” I asked. 

“He’s fine,” Dean said grudgingly, not wanting to change topics from driving my car. “Mom’s going crazy because he’s taking Latin and he’s apparently fantastic at it. The teacher sent him home with a certificate or something.”

“Latin? I didn’t know they offered that in the middle school.”

“They don’t. He joined a club for it because he’s a nerd.”

“He sounds… very devoted,” I said, suddenly feeling suspicious. “Any idea where the interest came from?”

Dean gave a noncommittal shrug, and I couldn’t get any more information out of him. He tried, unsubtly, to change the topic back to driving Baby, but I shut him down again and soon sent him home for dinner. As soon as he left, I rushed to my library, hoping to put my fears to rest, but unfortunately, they were not. After close inspection, I saw three volumes were missing, cleverly disguised by pushing the books closer together to hide the gaps. Two of the books were at random, an old hunter journal, and a demonology, both written in Latin. The last was in English, but since it was the Sir Urqwood diary, I could figure out exactly what had happened.

I had to wait a few days, to catch Sam at the right moment, and finally saw him in the yard by himself that Saturday afternoon. I walked up to the hedge that separated our yards and called out to him.

“Hey, Sam. Nice weather today, huh?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Winchester,” Sam said blithely, oblivious to my suspicion. 

“You think you could come over for a bit and help me with some chores?” I asked, setting my trap.

“Sure,” Sam said with a shrug, and started to walk over.

“Oh, and bring back those books you borrowed from my library, OK?”

Sam froze, looking up at me with panic in his eyes, his guilt immediately visible because he hadn’t learned the sort of guile he needed in his previous life. Under my condescending glare he nodded shakily and ducked back into the house. When he returned with the thick volumes tucked under his arm, we walked back to my house together.

“I’m real sorry Mr. Winchester,” Sam started as soon as I closed the door behind us and I tugged the books out of his hands, quickly inspecting them for any damage – not because I actually thought Sam had damaged them, but because I wanted to make him squirm.

“How did you even get in there?” I asked, honestly amazed since I always kept the library locked. 

“You… you left the window open all summer…” Sam said, bashfully, and I could just imagine him popping the screen up and climbing through the window to finally satisfy his curiosity. It must have been laughable to break into the house of a security consultant. 

“And why did you steal my books?” I asked, and Sam shrugged, eyes glued to the floor until I said his name sharply and he jumped, briefly meeting my eyes before looking away.

“Didn’t steal ‘em. Was gonna put them back. Just wanted to know what they were,” he paused there, building up courage and trying to find the right kind of words to make a challenge. “They’re not security manuals.”

“No. They’re not,” I said as briskly as I could because panic was starting to rise in my chest. This was the one thing, the one and only thing that I’d needed to keep away from them, to keep them safe and innocent for as long as I could, and I’d fucked it up. “Did you show these to Dean?”

“No,” Sam scoffed. “He wouldn’t care anyway.”

I let out a quiet sigh of relief at that. At least Dean was safe for now, but now it would be even harder keeping him away from it, and Sam was clearly going to be a problem.

“Are they real, Mr. Winchester?” Sam asked cautiously, nodding at the books. “Because, like the way they write them, it seems like-”

“No,” I said firmly, but then I softened. “But some people used to think these things were real. It’s all just fantasy.”

“Oh,” Sam said, the disappointment clear in his eyes. A kind of disappointment that would make the old Sam laugh, because he knew what the reality of these books were, and this Sam just knew the watered down fantasy stories and video games, so vastly separated from the pain and ache of their reality. It was almost sweet how he wished demons and monsters were real. “So, do you think I could borrow one of your books for real? They’re fun to translate.”

“Sam,” I said, pushing the books further away on the table. “I think you should try to focus on your real homework, and not some strange history books.”

Sam frowned at me, a stubborn, heavy reminder of the bitch face he’d made in a previous life and I had to try not to laugh. Reluctantly he agreed, though I found out later that he was still participating in his Latin club, and still excelling. I made sure to keep the windows in my library shut and locked from then on. I knew Sam’s curiosity would not be killed, but it wasn’t going to get fed in my house.

~

I hadn’t seen Dean in several weeks, not really anyway. He hadn’t popped over to the house to fuss with Baby, and he didn’t come by to study with Sam anymore. That was strange enough, but even when I saw him in his yard, or walking through the neighborhood, he would barely say hello, or even wave. It certainly seemed like he was avoiding me, but that couldn’t be true, could it? That doubt made me start to worry and I had to find out what was going on.

Even when Calvin and Deirdre were home, Sam and Dean often still came to my house for homework. Their house was small, so if someone was watching TV in the living room, you could hear it in every room. So the boys said my house was better for them to study – I still sometimes think this was a ruse, an excuse for Sam to try to sneak in to my library, and for Dean to satisfy his curiosity about me. Over time, it became natural for the boys to pop in without invitation. 

One afternoon while Sam had books piled on my kitchen table, and Dean was nowhere to be seen, I pushed my luck and decided to start a little investigation of his whereabouts and strange behavior. Sam was the most obvious confidant, and his lack of guile worked against him, I almost felt bad about it. But I could be direct with him. No need for tricks or games if he knew anything.

“Sam,” I said, pulling him out of his books while I presented a bowl of potato chips for him. “Did I do something to make Dean angry?”

“No,” Sam said, the honesty pure and bright in his eyes, and I felt relieved already, but not satisfied.   
“Why?”

“He hasn’t been around much. I feel like he’s avoiding me.”

“Oh,” Sam said, and lowered his eyes back to his books, letting me know there was more that he wasn’t saying.

“Did he say something to you? About not wanting to come here anymore?” I pressed, gently, though perhaps not as gently as I could. I couldn’t bear the thought of Dean avoiding me without knowing the reason.

“Yeah… few days ago…” Sam started, unsure and a little confused. I waited patiently while he figured out the words, or whether he wanted to tell me at all. I released a small breath when he continued. “Asked him to come with me, but he didn’t want to. We fought about it a bit…” Sam trailed off.

“Did he say why he didn’t want to come over?” I urged, feeling like I was almost there.

“Not really,” Sam shrugged. “Just said, I dunno, he had a weird dream, but, I don’t know what that means.”

A weird dream didn’t mean anything to me, and when I tried to press Sam for more details, he clammed up with nothing more to say. I may have even worried him a little with my persistence about such a small detail, but it was maddening for me. I refilled the bowl of potato chips and left Sam to finish his homework, a bit more worried than I was before.

Hours later, after Sam had returned home and the evening hours dragged on, I slowly and carefully extended my grace. I still didn’t use it much, except when Baby needed it, so I wanted to savor the stretch and feel of my grace flowing through me and out of me, through the neighborhood. 

I let my grace glide unnoticed into the Baker household, finding Calvin and Deirdre fast asleep in their bedroom, and Sam asleep in his twin bed. Not more than a few feet from there, Dean slept, though not as restfully as everyone else in the house. My grace slid against his cheek, a gentle caress of love and longing, though it brought him no comfort as he shifted restlessly in his sleep. 

Without hesitation, I delved deeper into Dean’s mind, as I had done many times before, and passed invisibly into his dreams, an unnoticed observer to his subconscious mind. When I found him, I realized immediately why Dean has avoided me. In his mind, he shifted in his bed while a dream version of myself moved rhythmically on top of him. The picture was hazy and unclear, a dream of half-realized potential where the subconscious had to fill in what the conscious mind didn’t know enough about. It was not uncommon for boys Dean’s age to experience such confusing and unsatisfying sexual dreams.

That Dean was having a dream like this gave me a small thrill of excitement and pleasure. Another bleed through from his previous life perhaps, attracting him to me. However, it was worrisome for several reasons. For one, Dean was much too young. I saw him as a child, only a shadow of the man I loved and unprepared for this sort of thing. The other, which was more worrisome was a detail in the dream. Frequently Dean’s subconscious repeated the dream Castiel reaching out to touch his left shoulder, where my hand print had marked his former body. Each touch sent a thrill through Dean’s mind, tugging at his memories. 

That was far too dangerous. The dream was too close to memory and I worried Dean would go mad as Anna had done so many years ago before she got all her memories back. These shadows of his former life would haunt and confuse him, with no relief but the truth, and I could not give that back to him yet. But I also couldn’t leave him like this. Gently, my grace wrapped around the dream, shifted and pulled it back until it was gone, replaced with blackness for a moment until Dean’s subconscious settled on a new topic, sitting in math class with some lemurs. That was much safer.

I ran one more check, scanning for any other stray memories, but found none. I retreated with my grace, leaving Dean to sleep peacefully, unperturbed for a while longer from his past life.

With the dreams erased, I’d thought Dean would return to his cheerful, friendly self, eager to do homework and fawn over my car, but this was not to be. Though the dreams had stopped, Dean remained as stand-offish as before. I checked and rechecked, but there were no other strange dreams to keep him away, and Sam, too, could not explain it. He would just shrug his shoulders and say Dean was getting like that with everyone, even his parents.

Deirdre said he was just being the most stereotypical teenager possible to be annoying and show his independence. Calvin said he needed a little more privacy since he was getting older. A bit reluctantly, Deirdre agreed to let them remodel the basement and give Dean his own room. 

It was a good thought in theory, and Sam seemed relieved to have his brooding older brother out of his room, but it didn’t change his attitude in the least, and only enforced that independent streak. The sweet little boy whose soul had sparkled bright and clear in the park was gone, and the young man coming into being was taking his place, aching through his growth in body and mind, and taking it out on everyone.

~  
By the time Dean was sixteen, he’d settled down. His broodiness and standoffishness were gone, but he was still fiercely independent, a streak that I was certain would not be a phase. He had also grown, just shy of his height in his previous life, but he could still grow a little more. His muscles were starting to come in, though his frame was still slim and boyish. He fought aggressively against this and saved up his money to buy himself a weight machine, and even jogged most days. I had to chuckle at the thought of my Dean exercising, making himself sweat and ache for no other reason than to improve his body.

While he was not quite the cheerful, cheeky boy he’d been before, he was sociable and helpful. He returned to do yard work, and even charged a reasonable rate. He came back to work on Baby when he could. When he touched her, that little boy shined through as he grinned with excitement, eager to get his hands and clothes dirty. But he also had a new love, one I tried not to feel jealous of for Baby’s sake. It was a Toyota, like I’d suggested. Dean would spend hours on his baby, a distinction he made clear with emphasis. If only he knew he had a Baby, and that the Japanese car would never compare. I had to chuckle at the endearments he laid on his car, and thought of how annoyed he would be when he got his memories back, and the apologies he would lay down on his true love.

Dean’s social life blossomed with his car, and he was out with friends at any chance he could get. He often claimed he was at the library or afterschool events, but I didn’t need to read minds to know half of those were lies, and neither did Deirdre or Calvin. But, he kept his grades up, stayed out of trouble, and managed his responsibilities, so they gave him his small freedoms. 

One such responsibility was Sam, a trope that would likely repeat itself for the rest of time. While Deirdre and Calvin took themselves out on a date, Sam came to my house to watch a movie. At fourteen, he was old enough to stay home alone of course, but he still preferred my company to none. Of course, he also still wanted to get into my library, but I ignored that valiantly. 

Sometime past eleven, Sam was snoring quietly on the couch while the end credits to his latest science fiction obsession rolled across the screen. Headlights flashed against the wall of my house, and a car door slammed. It was only one, so it had to be Dean, and that was confirmed when there was a knock on my door. I answered it and there he was to collect Sam.

“Sam’s sleeping,” I said quietly as I opened the door. Dean nodded and entered quietly. Sweet as Sam was when he was awake, he was a real monster if you woke him up the wrong way. Dean was the only one who knew all the tricks, another repeating pattern for all eternity, leaving Deirdre and Calvin relying on him to get Sam to school on time in the morning. 

“What were you up to tonight?” I asked conversationally, starved for any little contact I could get from Dean.

“Hanging out with Celia and Roger,” Dean said simply, but then he kept going, continuing the conversation, which was a bit unusual. “What’d you two do tonight?”

“We just watched a movie. Space something or others.”

“Again? Geez that kid,” Dean said with a chuckle. “He’s got damn near every line memorized by now. You actually watch it with him?”

“Only some. I had a bit of work to do,” I said, nodding toward my library. Dean still thought it was all security manuals, and never wondered any more than that, which was a relief. I’d been grateful Sam was too absorbed in his movie to listen in while I talked Terrence through a banshee destroying spell. 

“Should get a job like you when I’m older. Must be cushy staying home all the time,” Dean said.

“It’s certainly more comfortable,” I said, smiling. It was the longest conversation I’d had with Dean in months, and it was such a simple pleasure. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. 

“You think I could get into a security job like yours?” Dean asked, and I was a bit surprised by the question. Dean had never shown any interest in my work before.

“I suppose,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask for any sort of advice, since I really had no clue about how to get into a legitimate security field.

“Maybe you could show me what you do sometime, like in your library? Sometime when Sam isn’t around.”

All of a sudden, Dean’s hand was on my hip, and I looked down at it, baffled for a moment, and then back up to Dean just in time to see him leaning forward, lips pursed and expression hungry. With only a second and an inch to spare, I put my hand up and felt his moist, warm lips against my palm. It made my heart stutter for a moment, this brief, nothing touch of intimacy. 

Thwarted, Dean stayed there with his forehead bumping against mine and his eyes pressed tightly shut. He didn’t pull away, and neither did I. I could feel his lips pursed against my hand, and his jaw clenching tight and loose, over and over again. His skin felt so warm, and his breath was hot against my cheek. It flooded me with memories of every touch from Dean I’d had in his life before, and every touch in this life, pale in comparison though they were. 

“Cas,” Dean murmured against my hand with a muffled voice. Gently I pushed him back. Pulled my hand from his mouth but kept it on his shoulder. Reluctant to lose contact with him, but wary of letting him get too close again.

“What was that about?” I asked, keeping my voice cool and even.

“Whaddya think?” Dean asked, a hurt expression on his face, though he was trying to hide it behind sarcasm and sass. “I like you.”

“Dean, I’m old enough to be your father.”

“So?” Dean said with a shrug. “Age is just a number.”

“Yeah, a number the police would be interested in,” I said, and Dean rolled his eyes. For a moment, I thought about my own reaction, many years ago when talking with Sam. I didn’t care that Dean was a toddler who would be missed by his parents, and I didn’t think his age would matter so long as I could have him again. But this Dean in front of me, though he was starting to look like the man I’d once known, he had the lingering look of the child he still was. I’d seen him grow from a little boy, into a bigger boy. But he was still just a boy. Too young. Too innocent. 

“I think you should go home Dean. Just put this out of your mind, OK?” I said gently. Dean frowned at me, opened and shut his mouth again, like he was about to say something, but couldn’t find the right words. Finally, with a frustrated growl, he stormed into the living room, and roughly woke Sam up. While Sam was still growling and groggy, Dean dragged him out of the house despite his protests, slamming the door behind him.

I finally let my cool demeanor slide away, slumped to the floor, and pressed my lips to my hand where Dean had kissed me. I let memories wash over me, drowning and indulging in them as much as I could. I was instantly encased in my first kiss with Dean, so many years ago. The apocalypse raged around us, a seemingly unstoppable force. We needed answers, we needed my brother Raphael. Dean gave me his last night on Earth speech, but I didn’t realize what it meant at first. We fumbled through it, first with the prostitute, then in the back seat of Baby. He made a promise that I would not die a virgin, and he kept it. He was hesitant at first, as unsure as I’d ever seen him as he leaned in closer and closer to me and then our lips touched for the first time. My hunger for Dean awakened at that first kiss, and was never slackened, though I kissed him a million more times. 

Reluctantly, I pushed the rest of the memory away. At the beginning of my search, my physical desire for Dean had been so strong. I was starved for his touch. When I finally found him, I bedded that desire and reformed it into affection so I could protect him and his childhood. It had been easy when I looked at his childlike face. I still wanted to protect him and keep him innocent, but it would be considerably more difficult with Dean’s surge toward adulthood.

~

Visits from hunters always worried me, which wasn’t unfounded after that fiasco with Adrienne. Unfortunately, they were often a necessity. Terrence was one exception to my worry, since he was the only one who understood exactly my circumstances. He was my only friend in the world, so when he showed up at my door needing help, I never begrudged him.

When he showed up with Shayla, I was even happy. I had a soft spot for Shayla, which may have started from my mistaking her for Dean, but as the years had passed, I had my love for the woman she really was. And she returned that love as well. She was too smart, and had pieced together my back story, even though Terrence claims he never told her anything. 

Terrence called ahead, but it was for more than a social call. He wanted to give me a warning, telling me to do some research. But we both knew my books weren’t really what he needed. When he got to my house, he was carrying Shayla. She was unconscious, and her usually dark brown skin looked pale with an undertone of blue, especially around her lips. She was cold to the touch, and would occasionally shiver, her teeth chattering at the same time.

“Frost giant,” Terrence said, and that was all the explanation I needed. A fearsome creature usually only found in Scandinavian countries, but had followed human settlers to the Americas. They’d found happy homes in snow-capped mountains and fed mostly on sheep and goats. But if they got a taste for human flesh, they were a force to be reckoned with. A single touch would freeze the victim slowly from the inside until they were a block of ice. There was no known cure, which was why Terrence had raced to my side.

“Put her on the couch,” I said. Terrence obeyed and I sat on the coffee table next to Shayla. I laid my hands on her, seeking gently, and found her heartbeat. It was slow and struggling, but still there. The heart would be the place to start, and then work out from there. I eased my grace slowly into Shayla, allowing a slight trickle of warmth to seep into her. Her heart throbbed at the warm touch, and I let it radiate outwards. Very quickly, color returned to her cheeks, and the shuddering soon eased into murmured sighs of relief. Some from Shayla, some from Terrence. 

“Put the kettle on,” I said once I knew Shayla was safe. “She’ll want something warm when she wakes up.” Terrence nodded and retreated to the kitchen. I could hear him fumbling around in the cabinets as he set up the hot water. Shayla’s eyes suddenly opened, and she looked around confused for a moment, but then relaxed when she saw me.

“Heya Cas,” she croaked, her throat rough. I sent more grace through to sooth that until the tea was ready. Or hot chocolate. Yes. She would prefer hot chocolate. “Guess I wasn’t as quick as I thought with those frost giants, huh?”

“You’ll get quicker,” I said.

“Gonna tell me to be more careful?”

“Good hunters aren’t careful. And you wouldn’t listen anyway.”

“True,” she said. “I’d be dead if you weren’t here, right?”

“Unless you could find an Asgardian, but most of them died during the apocalypse. So yes. You’d be dead.”

“Not much for sugar coating, are you?” Shayla said, giving me what her father called the ‘side-eye,’ a sign of gentle disapproval.

“He’s not, but that’s what I’m for,” Terrence said, returning with a cup of hot chocolate for Shayla, and some coffee for himself. He had stopped offering me food or drink when we were alone a long time ago. Shayla took her drink and blew on it hurriedly while she took the tiniest sips. 

“Thank you,” Terrence said, heartfelt, deep, so I knew there was more coming. I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and a knowing nod. 

“You and Shayla are important to me. I’ll do anything for you I can. You know that.”

“Anything?” Shayla said, perking up more than the hot chocolate would allow. “Will you tell me a story about Dean?”

“Shay,” Terrence said scolding and shaking his head toward me, letting me know I didn’t have to, but I just smiled back. Perhaps this was part of my love for Shayla, her willingness to let me indulge in my past without feeling guilty about it. She loved to hear about the righteous man, and how she reminded me of him. I loved telling her stories about him.

“Hmm, I do remember one time we went up against an ice element, not nearly as bad as a frost giant, but-”

“No, tell a romantic story,” Shayla insisted, which earned another grumble from her father, but little else. When Shayla was younger, she just wanted to hear the adventure stories. Now she wanted to hear what she called the “love story” between Dean and I. Terrence had warned me she was getting into romance novels.

“Did I tell you about when we went to Hawaii?”

“I thought Dean hated flying?”

“He did,” I said, wondering now if he was still afraid of flying. “But we used ‘angel airlines’ to get there faster. On the first day, he got badly sunburned, but I couldn’t heal him because he was seen by too many people.” Shayla laughed and inched forward on the couch, clutching her hot chocolate, but otherwise forgetting it. Terrence was also listening, though pretending not to. “So we spent most of the day inside, or Dean had to wear a long sleeved shirt, and then we would go out after nightfall to swim.”

“Did you go skinny dipping?” Shayla asked with a sly smile, and she actually made me blush a bit.

“Shay!” Terrence scolded, and the question was quickly retracted. Fortunately, because the answer was definitely ‘yes’ and my blush gave away too much in front of Shayla. She wouldn’t have believed me if I said ‘no.’

“Did you ever go back to Hawaii?” she asked, her safer question earning a satisfied nod from her father.

“No, we went to a lot of other places though.”

“When Dean gets his memories back, you should take him again, and make sure he puts on sunscreen this time.”

“Maybe we will,” I said. “But that’s enough stories. It’s late, and you need some rest after what you’ve been through.”

Shayla made that face, where she was about to protest, but Terrence gave her a parental look, one that brooked no arguments. Shayla gave in quickly just as she was stifling a yawn. She wrapped me in a hug and murmured ‘goodnight’ in my ear before retreating down the hall to my bedroom, a room that I never actually used. Terrence would get the spare room. I would watch over them, and Dean, and the Baker household like I usually did.

“How’s your charge doing?” Terrence asked. He didn’t often refer to Dean by name when he meant Dean Baker. He’d never actually met or seen the boy, and really just considered him my mission, rather than a person.

“He’s happy, healthy, doing well in school.”

“Just two more years, and you’re going to give him back his memories, right?”

“Yes, Sam was right that I should wait,” I said, glad Sam wasn’t around to hear me say it. “His brain isn’t fully developed yet, so the old memories might actually hurt him. But if I wait longer, Dean might get annoyed.”

“And when he gets his memories back, will he forget his family?” Terrence asked with mild concern.

“No, no,” I said quickly and reassuringly. “It’s just more memories, like remembering something from the past. Nothing will be lost. I wouldn’t… If that was how it worked, I wouldn’t take his family away from him.” It was a truth I realized as the words came out of me. I’d seen Dean growing up with Sam, being taken care of and loved by Deirdre and Calvin. I cringed to think that many years ago I would have ripped him away from that, and never let him experience it. But this new realization soothed that embarrassing thought.

“What’re you gonna do after he remembers? I mean, in general, I don’t wanna hear the details that Shayla wants to hear,” Terrence said with a laugh.

“Pick up where we left off,” I said casually. “I still own our house, though it will need some serious repairs at this point. We could help you and Shayla on hunts more often,” I continued cheerfully. Dean would probably be grateful to have a young body again. I don’t think he ever got over the need to retire. He never liked hunting, not really, but in a way, he loved it. It was a duty, and responsibility, one he couldn’t ever abandon, but he did not face it grudgingly. 

“And if he doesn’t want to be a hunter?”

“Why wouldn’t he want to be a hunter?” I caught myself about to tilt my head to the side, a tic I’d never noticed until Dean pointed it out to me, and one I struggled to control. I’d gotten bad without Dean there to mimic and mock me, making little owl sounds when he caught me in the act. 

“Dunno,” Terrence said with a shrug. “Isn’t one lifetime of hunting enough?”

“You don’t know Dean very well,” I said, a gentle laugh to ease off Terrence’s question. “When he gets his memories back, it’s the first thing he’ll want to do.” I paused. “Well, maybe not the first thing,” I said with a small leer. Terrence laughed, caught off guard by my joke. We moved on to other topics, about frost giants, spells, new guns, old cars, until Terrence’s head started to nod and I sent him to the spare room. I spent the rest of the night, as usual, keeping an eye on Dean and answering the hunter phones.

~

Terrence and Shayla had taken Dean’s antics off my mind, but it certainly hadn’t stopped him thinking and plotting about me. All of a sudden, Dean was in my house at every chance. There was always some excuse. He saw some fallen branches in my yard, he needed to borrow some sugar for Deirdre, he wanted some advice for fixing up his Corolla, he was looking for Sam. And with every excuse came another trial for me to wade through and overcome. His hands were on me all the time, starting out innocently enough on a shoulder or arm, but then inevitably daring to go further and grazing against a nipple through my shirt, or blatantly grabbing my ass. I’d push his hands away and scold him as harshly as I could, but he would just smile, looking barely repentant, and then try again when I wasn’t looking.

One time, he cornered me in the kitchen, pushed me into a nook between cabinets and leaned in for another kiss. I used just a tiny surge of my inhuman strength to push him off, and then having had enough of him for the day, hauled him toward the door and quite literally threw him outside. I ignored his knocking and retreated to the bathroom for a cold shower.

I might have found Dean’s persistence more charming if I wasn’t so determined to keep him innocent of his past. Having to say no to him over and over again was frustrating when all I wanted to do was wrap him in my arms again, flood his mind with memories, and finally have him back. Each touch he landed, each pleading look for more was another crack and I didn’t know how long until I broke. I wanted to give in to him, and I wanted to hold out for him.

Sam was at my kitchen table, studying. Naturally, Dean was there, prowling around the house like a starving animal, with me as the prime rib. I stuck close to Sam, walking him through his homework, and blithely using him as a shield against Dean, who wouldn’t try anything with Sam as witness. 

But the second he had the chance, I knew Dean would strike. So when Sam got up for the bathroom, I braced myself. As soon as the bathroom door was shut, he was right next to me, pulling up a chair next to mine, scooting close enough that his knee and shoulder touched mine. 

“Dean,” I said warningly, leaning away from him to break the contact. I also kept my head turned, he was devilish in his attempts to kiss me, and on one or two occasions had clipped my cheek with his greedy mouth.

“Gimme a little kiss and I’ll cool it for the night,” Dean said, tapping his lips to indicate where he wanted to be kissed.

“You’re too young,” I said.

“That’s all you ever say, ‘you’re too young, you’re too young,’ ” Dean parroted, even imitating my lower, gruffer voice. “But is that the only thing holding you back? Thinking you’re some perv?” Dean’s hand went to my thigh, quickly moved upward until I grabbed it and placed his hand on the table, holding it there and glaring at him.

“Dean, you shouldn’t be touching me like this.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Dean said. “I’m almost seventeen. That’s practically eighteen. I won’t tell anyone you like me.”

“Dean, I don’t-” but I cut myself off.

“Ha, see? You can’t say it,” Dean said smugly. “You do like me, you just won’t admit it.”

That was true, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I could just say the words, even if they were a lie, if that would finally work. I’d tried to form them a few times, when Dean got particularly frustrating, but I couldn’t manage it. Dean had caught on to this and it just fueled him for more. If I couldn’t lie to him, I’d never be able to survive. 

“Dean, this childish infatuation of yours needs to stop,” I said, trying hard to keep the tremor out of my voice as poisonous words came out of my mouth. “I’m flattered that you are so interested in me, but I can’t… I can’t return your feelings. I don’t want you coming over anymore if you can’t control yourself.”

“But Cas-” Dean said, for once his face looking hurt by my rebuke.

“Mr. Winchester,” I said firmly, cutting him off before he could argue. “I think you should start calling me that again.”

“But that’s… I can’t… Don’t you realize I’m in l-”

“Don’t,” I said quickly, and I could feel my own voice tighten in my throat when I almost heard that word. “I don’t feel that way about you, so all of this needs to stop. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, spitting the word out. I was expecting him to growl, stand up angrily, knocking over his chair in his rush to get out, like he had when he first tried to kiss me. But he didn’t. He stood slowly, and as he did, he turned his face away, but not before I saw a glimmer in his eye. There was a loud snuffle and he brought his hands to his face, scrubbing quickly so that I wouldn’t realize. Without another word, he left, closing the door quietly behind him, but leaving me stunned and aching.

I told myself over and over again, that it was for the best. He wasn’t ready to have his memories back. He deserved to be a child for a little while longer. Letting those feelings manifest would just make it dangerous, bring the memories back too soon, confuse him and hurt him. Over and over again I told myself it was for the best. But I wasn’t very convincing.

“Where’s Dean?” Sam asked when he came out of the bathroom. It only just occurred to me that he’d been in there for quite a while and I wondered if that was deliberate. Had he heard us talking and stayed away, or had he planned it with his brother to give him a chance? Either option was possible.

“He went home,” I said, and I could see a question on Sam’s lips, so maybe it was the second option after all. “Should we get back to your report? I think we’re almost finished,” I said, cutting off Sam’s thoughts on the matter, whatever they were. He nodded slowly, dropped the subject, and went back to his homework.

~

I expected it to be like before, when Dean was a sullen, moody, almost invisible teenager. I assumed he would avoid me, act awkwardly if we were forced to be together. I knew it would hurt, but it had to be that way for his benefit. 

I was not expecting him to show up with a girlfriend.

Her name was Rachel. She was smart, and pretty, and she made Dean laugh. I hadn’t seen him so at ease and happy in such a long time. That sweet, charming quality he’d had as a little boy was back. He was helpful, brave, and absolutely endearing at home and around the neighborhood. Rachel came over frequently, joyfully welcomed at the Baker dinner table, and Dean was just as often out with her on dates. 

The initial shock hit me so hard at first, that I didn’t have time to be hurt. I couldn’t help but marvel over the change in him. I confess a little jealousy. When Dean had chased me around, only his worst behaviors had come out to tease me relentlessly. With Rachel, everything was different. 

One night I was talking with Terrence while he was working a hunt with Shayla in Montana. After her near fatal incident with the frost giant, he’d tried to keep her out of the field. He urged her toward research as much as he could, but he couldn’t deny how useful her hands-on experience was when he needed back-up. The case was finished, but Terrence had found a book I might be interested in and we were figuring out if it would be safe to mail, or if he’d better drop it off in person.

I cut him off quickly though when I realized someone was entering the Baker house. To ensure Dean’s safety, I’d puts wards around his house, so no monsters could get in, or even just thieves, and I would be alerted. I couldn’t let anything hurt Dean, especially not some scared idiot with a knife.

I flew out to the yard, and invisibly watched as someone was climbing through the basement window into Dean’s bedroom. I panicked for a moment, but then relaxed when I realized it was just Rachel. My relief was then washed over with confusion as for about half a second I wondered why Rachel was climbing in through a basement window, after ten p.m., when Dean’s parents were home. 

“Oh,” I said out loud a moment later.

I hadn’t realized Dean was so involved with Rachel. His passes at me had seemed innocent and fumbling, but I guess that wasn’t the case. Somehow though, I was not crushed with jealousy. I watched as the last of Rachel slid through the window, but then I retreated. I never spied on Dean in private moments. I wasn’t about to start.

I returned to my house to consider this new information in quiet introspection. Why did the thought of Dean having sex with someone else not enrage me? Why wasn’t I jealous or heartbroken? The thought many years ago had almost driven me mad, and that was without anything happening. 

But Dean was happy. I could see that on his face, in his actions. Rachel did that for him, and if not her, then maybe someone else down the line. He could marry some girl, or some boy. They could have children together and buy a house, be normal and safe and happy like Deirdre and Calvin had been. I realized that wasn’t something I could offer Dean. All I had to offer him were memories of a bloody and painful past. Could I really do that to him when he had so much better in front of him? Perhaps, I started to think, it was better if I finally let Dean go.

~

A few weeks passed, and my resolve hardened. Rachel tripped off my wards so many times sneaking into Dean’s window that I finally altered them to let her pass. Some days, I caught myself fantasizing about Dean in a house of his own, with a wife, and holding a baby that had sparkling green eyes like his. Other days, my heart ached with ancient pangs of jealousy, and I imagined wrapping Dean in my arms again, kissing him, flooding him with the past and then looking into his eyes with truth and love. I couldn’t make up my mind which I wanted more.

Sam was over yet again, not for homework though. He just wanted to play video games, but Dean and Rachel were ‘hogging the TV’ in Sam’s words, to watch a movie. 

“They’re being all gooey and lovey-dovey, too. It’s so gross,” Sam said, making a face. “Don’t you just hate Rachel?” Sam asked with a conspiratorial grin, and I realized he hadn’t come over just to play video games, but to vent, and hopefully find an ally. I would not give him that satisfaction.

“Rachel is a lovely girl. I’m glad she’s making Dean so happy,” I said smugly. 

“What?” Sam said, loudly, and so shocked, that he ended up surprising me. But what he said next, surprised me even more. “You can’t like her. She’s all over Dean all the time! You’re supposed to get jealous.”

“Jealous, why would I be jealous?”

“Exactly! My brother is so stupid. I told him he should have gotten a boyfriend, but he wouldn’t listen, he thought he would just grab some girl-”

“Sam Baker you sit down and shut up right now!” I shouted, fury overcoming me with surprising ease. Sam snapped his mouth shut and plopped down on the couch, looking up at me defiantly. “Are you telling me Dean got a girlfriend just to make me jealous?”

“Yeah, duh,” Sam said.

“And you’ve been helping him string some poor girl along, letting her think they’re dating?”

“He’s not stringing her along, they’re friends.”

“Oh, a friend who climbs in his window after your parents have gone to bed? How stupid do you think I am?”

“I dunno. Why’d Rachel climb in the window facing your house, when there’s a door to the basement on the other side?” Sam asked, grinning at me. 

Apparently I’m a little stupid. I scrubbed at my face, annoyed, confused, and terrified that Dean had gone to such lengths to get my attention. That somehow, he’d drawn Sam into his subterfuge, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. Perhaps Sam also had some lingering memories, something that drew him to me, recognized something between Dean and I. Something that was a thing of the past. Something that was affecting Dean’s life so drastically that he couldn’t think straight anymore. I’d spent years searching for him, when I should have left him alone. I spent years watching over him, even though he was safe. I had clung to the love he had felt for me in a past life, when I should have let his love blossom somewhere else. I finally realized what I should have done years ago when Dean first said he was tired. I would do my best to make up for it now.

“Sam, this needs to stop. I can’t be with Dean,” I said gently.

“But he’s going to be eighteen soon, what difference does it make?”

“It’s not his age, Sam. I don’t love him,” I said, with more conviction than I’d ever been able to say before. “You need to tell him I said that, OK? Make sure he understands.”

“No,” Sam said petulantly. “That’s not fair. All he ever talks about is you.”

“I know,” I said. “But love isn’t fair. We don’t always get what we want. He’ll get over me.”

“No he won’t,” Sam insisted.

“He will. I promise. He just needs time, is all.”

Reluctantly, and only after several more arguments, Sam finally went home to spill the bad news. On the periphery of my grace, I could sense Rachel leaving the house. I felt a glimmer of temptation to reach out and feel how Dean reacted, but pulled back. It was time for me to move on as well, and allow myself to get over him. I’d finally take the advice my brethren had given me so many years ago. I would return to Heaven and let its light help me heal.


	5. Chapter 5

In the first two weeks of August, the entire Baker family took a camping trip. I felt like this was an ideal time to leave, so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye. There would be some confusion and hurt feelings by my sudden and unexpected disappearance, but it was better that way. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to leave if Dean was still there, so I took the cowardly route of slinking away while he was gone.

Returning to Heaven meant I would have to leave my hunter supplies to someone, and Terrence was the obvious candidate. A few days after the Bakers had left in their over-stuffed minivan, Terrence and Shayla pulled into my driveway with a trailer strapped to the back of his car. At eighteen, Shayla had really grown up, tall, strong, and beautiful. She had some of her father’s features, but softened with femininity. As she had aged, her likeness to Dean had faded, and her soul represented only herself. Just as righteous, but in her own way. Dutifully, and with ease, she carried box after box out of my library and into the trailer, her fingers twitching anxiously to stop work and peruse each book. Her love for studying monsters was equal to her love of ganking them.

“Everything has to go,” I said to Terrence. He nodded, trying not to look as gleeful as his daughter. My collection was well known, and the envy of many hunters. Terrence would certainly gain some fame for this windfall. I could sense he was also hoping it would keep Shayla busy and off hunting for a while.

“This too,” I said as I handed Baby’s car key to Terrence.

“I can’t take that,” Terrence said, pulling his hand away.

“I can’t bring her to Heaven with me,” I said and pushed the key into his unwilling hand. “She’s only running on grace at this point. If anything else breaks, you won’t be able to fix her. Enjoy her as long as you can, all right?”

Terrence nodded solemnly and tucked Baby’s key into his pocket, deep and safe. “Still don’t understand how you can do this.”

“Do what?”

“Leave him. You spent all those years looking for him, then all this time looking after him. Do you know what I would do if I actually found my wife again? I wouldn’t let her go.”

“I already had a full life with him. That’s enough.”

“A full life? Funny, I thought angels lived forever,” Terrence said, his face lit up with a sort of anger I didn’t often see. It wasn’t directly aimed at me though. “He got a full life with you, but you’re getting short-changed here. It isn’t fair.”

“I just want him to have a normal life. A safe one. He can’t have that with me,” I said, shaking my head. My mind was made up. I would leave Dean to enjoy his life, free of monsters, blood, and angels. I’d had him longer than most could ever hope for, and that was as fair as I would get. Dean Baker deserved this chance that Dean Winchester never had. I wasn’t going to take that away from him. 

Terrence grabbed another box angrily and stormed off with it, just as Shayla was coming back into the house for another. She was hesitant, so it was clear she had heard most of our conversation. I readied myself for her own arguments and tirade. I’d heard an earful of it over the phone when I’d told them my plans. If anyone loved the idea of Dean and I being reunited more than I, it was Shayla.

But the heated words didn’t come. Instead she wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly, forcing my face into her neck and petting my hair down in the back. A gesture I’d seen her father subject her to when she was little, and then even when she wasn’t so little anymore. Like her, I struggled at first, trying to pull away from the intimacy, but since I didn’t use my angel strength, she clung to me and didn’t let go until I settled. 

“I’m gonna miss you, Cas,” Shayla said, the words so quiet, I almost needed my grace to hear them. I was caught off guard by her heartfelt words, having expected more arguments about Dean. I wrapped my arms back around her, hugging her back.

“I’ll come to visit. I promise.”

“You’d better,” she said, a hint of a sniffle in her voice that she held back as best she could. “You gonna save me if I get frozen again?”

“Of course,” I said. After that incident, I’d tangled my grace with Shayla, like I did with Dean. It would alert me if she was in danger, or on the verge of death, and I would be able to fly to her side immediately. I couldn’t completely abandon her. 

“And when I die?”

“I’ll see you in Heaven.”

Shayla smiled at that. Heaven was a comforting lie for so many humans, or so they thought. For hunters it was a reality. One they might even experience a few times before it was final. So long as there wasn’t work left to be done, it really was a relief for most of them. 

“And when you’re in Heaven, we can-” but my voice caught in my throat as every nerve in my body went on the highest alert. The meaning of it made my whole body go cold.

“What? What will we do in Heaven?” Shayla asked. But I shushed her and closed my eyes, focusing my grace off into the distance. It wasn’t Shayla setting off my alarm, obviously, nor Terrence. It was farther off in the mountains.

“Sam’s in trouble…” I said with a thickening throat. “Dean too,” I said, which was even more alarming. What could possibly be happening to both of them that sent me into such a panic? And why did it have to happen now, when my mind was made up to leave them to themselves? I looked off into the distance, readied my wings, about to fly after them like I had so many time before, but then Shayla touched my arm.

“See? You still love them. You can’t just leave them,” Shayla said, smiling deviously like she’d planned this incident herself. 

“This is the last time,” I said, meaning it. If I left them, knowing they were in danger, I would always regret it. But once I cut ties with them, once I didn’t know, ignorance would be my salvation. 

“Yeah right,” I heard Shayla mutter just as I flew away. I could hear victory in her voice, but I was determined to prove her wrong. I would just check on them. Make sure the threat was not so deadly. I’d scare off a bear, or alert a ranger that they’d fallen into a ravine. Nothing drastic, and as invisible as I could. How much trouble could they get into in the woods anyway?

I honed in on Sam’s location. He and Dean were close, but Sam’s plight was the most frantic. Dean’s was secondary, not in immediate danger. I landed on the edge of a lake, expecting to see Sam struggling in deep water maybe, but what I saw instead made my heart sink. Over and over again, there was no escape for Sam and Dean. It seemed fate would never let them go.

Several feet into the pristine lake, Sam was not simply struggling against a strong current, but doing everything in his power to keep his head above water while a vicious water sprite, wakened after decades of slumber, tried to pull him under to finally feed. Meanwhile, Dean stood at the water’s edge, panicked by his brother’s plight, but dumbfounded and confused by the monster he saw, unable to react even though Sam was in danger. Automatically, I surged forward like I had so many times before, my angel blade at the ready to smite the monster into nothingness, when suddenly, Sam shouted something to Dean that snapped him from his frozen state.

“Dean! Your knife!” Sam spluttered, trying to keep his head above water and speak clearly enough for Dean to understand. “Cut-cut the tail! Loses its power!”

I watched in silent amazement as Dean snapped from his frozen state, and without much more hesitation, drew out his small hunting knife and leapt into the water toward the thrashing monster and his brother. Sam fought valiantly against the monster to keep it distracted while Dean came up from behind. He thrashed and struck at the monster’s face, hitting it in the sensitive nose to make it wail. Dean approached with caution, but no hesitation, and as the monster’s tail lashed up above the water he grabbed it. The monster shrieked, but it was too late and Dean was already sawing through its long, snaky tail. 

In that instant, he was the Dean I had always known before – muscle, knowledge, power over the supernatural. Me included. The water sprite was nothing under his hands but a corpse that didn’t know it yet. It let out a blood-curdling scream before melting away into a black, oily streak in the water. The entire fight was over in a matter of minutes. A record the Winchesters would have been proud of in a past life.

Sam was elated, delighted in his knowledge and realization of the truth that he had suspected for so many years. He splashed excitedly out of the water with Dean in tow, as if he hadn’t just almost died. He didn’t notice Dean frowning, rubbing at his temples, the knife dropped into the water. To an observer, it would look like he was stunned, but I realized what was happening, and my heart sank into my chest. My choice was being robbed from me before my eyes, unable to stop it. I could see Dean’s memories flooding back into his mind, rushing through each synapse of his brain, with pain, blood, and death. It only took another minute until Dean collapsed on the ground, crying out in pain. Sam’s excitement quickly dropped and he turned to his brother in a panic.

That was when I swooped in, eliciting a confused, questioning noise from Sam as I knelt beside his fallen brother and scooped him into my arms. In the haze of memories and pain, Dean looked up at me, confusion adding to his already sorry state. I reached to touch his forehead, to brush the memories away, bury them once and for all, but when I touched him, there was a spark of heat. Dean’s face softened and I saw other memories flooding him, warm, soft, joyful pleasures, blue eyes prominent in each one.

“Cas?” Dean said, the timbre of his voice heavy with memory and longing, so much more like he had been before. Not the boy I had intended to set free. And before I could stop him, Dean leaned up and kissed me. A surging sound of surprise passed into my mouth, and I felt it too, as Dean’s soul shifted, imprinting with those memories from his past life, and locking them into place. It hurt, I could tell, but Dean clung to me with hands and lips until his soul settled, pulsing ever brighter than before, no longer dimmed in its new shape. I had my Dean back.

“Cas, Cas, Cas,” Dean murmured against my lips as his old and new memories blended together, as he made sense of them and settled with them. “What happened?” Dean finally asked, pulling just a scant few inches from me so our lips were free but our breath still intermingled. For half a second I thought I could still erase his memories, bury them deep again, and Sam’s as well. Leave him like I was supposed to so he could be happy and safe from all this. But the touch of his lips still burned against mine, a long remembered sensation that was even finer when it was fresh, and I couldn’t help but think that even though we were tasting each other’s breath, he was still too far away from me.

“Dean?” Sam piped up from the side. To his eyes, nothing had happened, and everything was the same as before. It wasn’t though. And I wouldn’t let it be ever again.

“Sammy,” Dean said, the pet name long misused and easily flying to his lips. Sam made a disgusted look at the unusual pet name, and Dean laughed. “Go down the trail so mom and dad don’t worry. Don’t tell them what happened!”

“Duh, Dean!” Sam snapped, but then he grinned at the two of us, piled on top of each other in a tight embrace. “I knew they were real,” Sam threw at me before he skipped down the trail, back to where the Baker’s had made their camp. 

Dean smiled after his brother, doting as he had been in his life before, seeing a child now, not just a slightly younger brother. He then turned to me, and his expression hardened, concern covering his features. “Cas, what the hell happened?”

I told him, in fits and starts. He let me talk with little interruption, though he kissed me and clung to me when tears overcame me, and I wiped away his when he cried in sympathy. When I was finished with my story, Dean was sitting straddling my lap. I’d dried him from the lake, and he fit perfectly against my body. He was only about an inch taller than me, but still thinner, so he tucked himself into me to fit. 

“You were really just going to leave me here?” Dean asked when I’d finally told him everything. Absolutely everything like I hadn’t been able to do with anyone else in eighteen years, not even Terrence.

“I thought it was the best for you.”

“Stupid!” Dean snapped, and I looked up at him with surprise. “Best for me is bullshit, what about you? I told you forever, and I meant it. How dare you try to be miserable without my permission? You self-serving, sanctimonious jackass. Just wait till Sam gets his memories back, then we’re gonna yell at you together.”

“You want Sam to remember, too?” I asked, still surprised, still unbelieving that Dean would want his past and everything that came with it. But I saw him hesitate for a moment, doubt just a little, and then look over his shoulder, up the path where Sam had disappeared to be with their parents, having caught a shadow of their past lives, but not all of it. Dean frowned, deep in thought.

“You know he’s looking at colleges already? And he aced his PSATs…”

“We both know this was something Sam always wanted, school, family.”

“He’s my brother,” Dean said vehemently.

“I know.”

“I want him to remember me. And you.”

“OK.”

“Just… maybe not yet…”

“For his own good?” I asked, teasing gently.

“Shut up, yes, fine. But we are giving his memories back, just, after college. I’m not leaving him here. But he’ll get to make his own choice. We don’t decide for him. Clear?”

“Very,” I said, with a soft smile. It was something to look forward to, when Sam got all his memories back, when I had Sam and Dean back together again, and they could both scold me if they wanted to, my good intentions going awry again.

Dean buried his face in my neck and pulled me close to him as he breathed deeply against me, inhaling my scent. “I missed you so much. Didn’t even realize it, but I needed this,” he said, his lips moving against my skin, not quite a kiss, but almost.

“I missed you a lot, too,” I said, my hands moving tentatively over his body. I still felt hesitant, after years of ‘shouldn’t’ and ‘can’t’ that it was odd to have this possibility again. Dean noticed my hesitation and chuckled. He grabbed my hands and pressed them more urgently against his body, into places I’d only ever dreamed of touching again.

“You really are an angel. Can’t believe you resisted all this, even when I was throwing it at you.”

“It was hard,” I said, my breath getting short.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Dean said, thrusting down against my groin, where hardness had quickly swelled after years of abstinence. “Did you jerk off thinking about me?”

“Yes,” I admitted, gasping lightly as Dean’s hand went between my legs to squeeze me gently. “I know you did.”

“Practically dehydrated myself thinking about you,” Dean said, rolling his hips against mine. “And did you know my dick’s bigger? Got a good inch on me since my last body. Thicker, too…”

“Dean,” I groaned, shuddering at the thought of it. I hadn’t checked anything like that, for privacy, and really, my own sanity. But now the thoughts flooded my mind, and all the other things I hadn’t let myself think about at length, all the physical parts of Dean I had missed.

“Dean!”

Sam’s voice jarred and startled both of us, with Dean instinctively flying back and out of my lap, guilty teenager written all over his face. 

“Dean, mom and dad were getting worried!” Sam hollered, still out of sight, but clearly ringing the warning bell, so maybe Calvin and Deirdre were with him as well.

“Come get me tonight,” Dean said, standing and hastily adjusting himself in his pants so his erection wasn’t so obvious. “After mom and dad fall asleep. We’ll go find somewhere private, OK?”

I nodded, and Dean sauntered back down the path, tossing a wink and a grin over his shoulder to me before he disappeared over a hill. 

~

Somewhere private would have to be Dean’s basement bedroom at his parents’ house. I had flown back to explain to Terrence and Shayla what happened, and urged them to spend the night in my house while I sorted things out. Terrence was silent, condescending joy, while Shayla cheered blatantly, giving me an ‘I told you so’ look that I was sure she would get a lot of mileage out of.

I flew back to the Baker camp in the woods, staying invisible as I watched Dean with burning eagerness, waiting for his family to fall asleep so I could snatch him away for a few brief hours. I may have aided Deirdre and Calvin to sleep that night, and Sam too, to spare him the trouble. Dean was waiting for me, lying on top of his sleeping bag, and grinning as soon as I made myself visible.

“Did you mojo Sam to sleep?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling at the word ‘mojo’ which I hadn’t heard in a long time.

“You gonna angel airlines us somewhere private?” he asked with uncharacteristic eagerness.

“I thought you hated that?” I said, smiling more, vibrating with pleasure at this language I had not spoken, but never forgotten.

“Still do. But how else are we gonna get to my bedroom and back before my folks wake up?”

So we to his room, where I had to steady him for a moment after the quick flight. He wasn’t used to it anymore, though his younger body handled it better than his previous body did. I let my hands linger over him possessively as I held him up, no longer required to mask my desire to touch him.

“I can’t decide what I want to do to you first,” I said, tugging him close to give him a searing kiss. “Get that supposedly bigger dick of yours in me, or get inside you.”

Dean groaned deeply, melting in my arms and pushing up against me. He was already hard, product of a teenager aroused by a stiff breeze. “You know, I’m still a virgin, back there,” Dean whispered huskily in my ear, a clear challenge, which I accepted greedily, reaching around to grab his firm butt and give it a tight squeeze.

“Have you played back here? Got your fingers inside, or a dildo while thinking of me?”

“Fingers,” Dean panted, squirming eagerly against me and spreading his legs. “Never got the balls to buy a dildo.”

“Never concerned myself too much that you weren’t a virgin before,” I said, running my finger teasingly along the soft seam of Dean’s pajamas, pressing harder between his cheeks with each pass. “But after waiting so long, it’s very arousing to think no one has ever touched you here but me,” I said, pressing harder, right where Dean’s hole was, so close I could feel the heat of his skin through the cloth, and then, a sudden spasm and shudder that ran all through Dean’s body.

“Shit!” Dean cursed, clinging to me tighter as his body spasmed, shaking slightly. “Shit, sorry Cas…” he mumbled, embarrassment clear in his voice, and then I realized he’d come already, from a teasing touch through his pants and some dirty talk. “Don’t quite have control over this body yet,” he muttered. I could see his cheeks were bright red, and found it endearing, but I wouldn’t let him know that.

“That makes my decision easier then,” I said, lifting his chin to kiss his red cheeks. “I’ll fuck you first, then you me when you’re ready again.” I didn’t wait for a response, but freely used my mojo again, earning a grateful cheer from Dean when both sets of our clothes disappeared in a blink. Immediately my eyes were drawn to the sticky wetness of Dean’s cock, and I had to agree with him. He was going soft now, but he was certainly bigger than he’d been in his last life. I couldn’t wait to see it full grown again, and feel it inside me. It would have to wait though.

“You look exactly the same,” Dean said with wonder. He’d been running his eyes over me the same way I had, probably running through memories from our past life. He shook his head and smiled, then sauntered over to the bed and flopped down, striking a clichéd sexy pose on the bed. Ass up, legs spread, looking cheekily over his shoulder with pouty lips. I couldn’t resist, and was on top of him in seconds. 

I took my time, covering his skin with leisurely kisses. His soul I had memorized, but this new body needed mapping and learning. I started with his lips, kissing him deep and long, and letting him feel my weight across his back. Then, I moved my kisses lower, over his neck and shoulders, down one arm, then down his back. In his past life, Dean had been extremely ticklish around his sides, but when my lips grazed there, he didn’t even flinch. Same man, different responses. It would be fun learning them all over again. My lips moved further, skating his hips, then over the rounded globes of his ass. Someday, when I really wanted to take my time, I’d see if eating him out still made him scream, but I didn’t have the patience that night, and I doubt he did either. 

“Lube?” I asked.

“Do it like you used to,” Dean murmured, his words making my pulse beat faster. The rush of using my grace so freely was washing through me, making me eager for more. I didn’t have to hide it anymore, and could use it in all those clever ways I’d learned before with Dean. I pressed my thumb against Dean’s hole, and pressed my grace in further. He gasped and squirmed, and then my thumb slid inside him easily, his passage slick and loose from my grace. We’d hardly ever bought lube after we figured this out.

Still, I let my fingers push in first, curious and exploring. First two, then three, finding Dean relaxed, but still snug and tight. I pressed my fingers in deeper, seeking and searching, until Dean finally surged up, gasping with pleasure and clamping even tighter around my fingers.

“Fuck… fuck… Never did find that,” Dean murmured as he pressed back against my fingers, urging me to massage his prostate more. I could see his cock twitching between his legs, struggling to harden again after such a short time. I massaged him a little more, wringing sweet, mewling sounds from him until he grew impatient and his mewls turned to curses.

“Cas! C’mon! Don’t make me beg for it,” he snapped.

That would also be for another night. One of many, many more to relive and rekindle our passion. I turned Dean over, and he slid into position easily. I spread his legs, and pushed one knee up, bracing it under my arm to spread him wide open and make him comfortable. Dean wrapped his arms around my neck, kept me close, and looked into my eyes. 

“Keep looking at me,” Dean insisted, and I nodded as I pushed inside him. Watched as his pupils dilated, as his face tightened just slightly from the thick invasion, as his breath caught in his throat for an instant before it hissed past his lips. I pushed in slowly, not stopping, just edging forward easily, waiting for any protest or plea for pause. Dean gave none. Once I was all the way inside him, pushed as deep as I could go, Dean leaned up to kiss me, connecting our bodies completely. 

I started to move slowly, so our lips would not disconnect, savored the taste of him, and the feel of him. He tasted a little different, but Dean had always been such a good kisser, and he still remembered how. His tongue twined with mine, pushing and pulling gently as we explored each other again. But Dean stuttered a gasp into my mouth as I pressed deep inside him, the sensation overwhelming to his inexperienced body. I broke the kiss softly, sat up a bit, wanting to see him. He sprawled on the bed, spread wide for me, shuddering with each deep stroke. One hand clung around my neck, his short nails digging into my skin, the other hand clutched at the sheets, trying to hold on. A glance down and I could see he was already hard again, a marvel that young men’s bodies can perform. One I would take advantage of in the future. 

I wrapped my hand around Dean’s dick, making him jerk his hips up and tighten around me. His hand flew to cover mine, and he shook his head. He was already so close and I smiled gently, pushed his hand away, gave him a gentle squeeze. He was bigger. Not quite as much as Dean had teased earlier, but there was more girth to him, and some length. But so long as he moved inside me like he had before, it wouldn’t matter.

“Cas… don’t… gonna…” Dean pleaded, biting his lip to hold back another orgasm, while I continued holding his cock, stroking it almost absently. Well, I supposed there was room for a little fun, another game we used to play before that would be useful again. My grip changed, tightened around the base of Dean’s cock, and then there was warmth there, and Dean gasped with recognition. When I took my hand away, he could still feel that tight grip, a band around the base of his cock, holding his orgasm at bay.

“Fuck, Cas, you kinky bastard,” Dean panted, looking down at his straining cock, but he couldn’t see the invisible band of my grace, only feel it. “You gonna use me good tonight?”

“Use you good, use you bad, use you all up,” I murmured as I started moving again, faster, deeper, harder, putting my long restrained desire into Dean’s body. He took it greedily, letting it wind him up further, strain inside him, building hot like I was. Dean wrapped both his legs around my waist, jammed hard against me with each thrust, his face tightened up with concentration as he rode up onto me. 

“Cas, Cas, Cas,” was a litany out of Dean’s mouth, sobbed and gasped with each pounding thrust. “Missed this…” He moaned. “Didn’t even know it. But missed it so much. Missed you.”

His mouth was on me again, jerky, hungry, messy kisses. Clipped teeth and banged up noses. We swallowed each other’s noises and still needed more. Dean’s mouth always undid me. Wherever he chose to lay it, or how he used it, with tongue or with words. My last cry spilled fully into his mouth, a long, soulful cry of longing finally satisfied. I jerked my hips a few more times, pulsing hotly inside him, making Dean groan from this also long forgotten sensation. His hips wriggled against mine, and his legs tightened around my back to keep me close.

A minute or so passed, panting and sweaty, until Dean started to squirm, pushing his cock up against my belly. “Cas, c’mon. Lemme go,” he whined.

“Not yet,” I chided gently. “Not done using you yet.”

“Cas!” Dean said, a little more alarmed. “I’m gonna burst if you don’t let me go!”

“You’re not an incubus, don’t be so dramatic,” I said. I finally sat up, cool air rushing against my skin. I pulled back ever so slowly, watching my cock slip free from Dean’s body, followed by streaks of my come down his cheeks. His hole was red and puffy from my rough use, and I smiled at the sight of it. “How’s it feel not being a virgin anymore?”

“Backed up!” Dean growled. “Doesn’t count if I don’t come.” 

“You’re much needier now,” I said, leaning down to kiss Dean’s lips. He nipped at me mulishly to show his displeasure, only reluctantly kissing me back when I persisted.

“Can’t help it. Haven’t been this horny in like, a hundred years,” Dean said, sounding so pathetic I knew I wouldn’t be able to torment him for too long. But just a little more. I knew he could handle it, and that his protests were token at best, a product of an overactive libido. 

“I want to ride you.” I said. “Or do you want to be in charge now?” I asked, though I already knew the answer to that question when Dean moaned loudly. I knew what his favorite position was, the one that had even bled through in his wet dreams in this lifetime. 

“You gonna let me come?”

“We’ll come together. I promise,” I said, getting into position already, straddling Dean’s hips while he lay his hands on my thighs, spreading them wide so he could see everything. He liked this position best because he could see so much, loved seeing his dick sinking inside of me, my cock slapping against my belly. And he didn’t have to move, so he could just concentrate on looking and feeling. I tried not to indulge him too often, in case he got lazy.

I took Dean’s cock in my hand, hot, straining thing that it was, and lined it up against my hole. By the same trick I’d worked on Dean earlier, I was wet and stretched, ready to take him in. I pushed back against him, and let out a heady moan. I could feel the difference in his size, stretching me wider already. It would take some getting used to after years and years of memories of the exact same feeling. It was still my Dean though, I reminded myself as I pushed myself back and took more of him in, just shaped slightly differently. Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed.

As Dean watched me take him in, I watched him with just as much intent. His mouth was open, almost slack-jawed, except when he swallowed. His fingers gripped against my thighs as I wrapped around him, white-knuckled so tight it would hurt if I allowed it. But Dean needed to grip me so tightly. 

Finally, my full weight was on Dean’s hips, and my cock was upright again, bobbing gently against my stomach, as eager for more as I was. Dean looked dizzy with pleasure, overwhelmed and unable to reach the peak of it, hovering on the fine edge of something more that I wouldn’t let him find. 

I started rolling my hips slowly, little nudges back and forth, trying to get Dean’s dick right up against my prostate. It took a little more wiggling than usual, but I finally got it, let out a deep groan to show Dean my success. I allowed myself to be selfish with these teasing thrusts, not nearly enough friction for Dean, but enough to push me higher. He whined for more, gripping my hips and trying to tug me into the rhythm he wanted, but he should have known better. I am immoveable when I choose to be.

Eventually, I grabbed his hands and pushed them up over his head, held them there and bore down on him. We were nose to nose and I could lay teasing kisses on his lips, jerking away when he tried to kiss back, and taking his insults as the murmured sweets that they really were. In that position, I drew up more, and pushed back, the longer, deeper strokes that Dean had wanted. His insults turned to murmured pleasure, and his hands went lax in my hold. He even moved to meet my thrusts, bouncing me against his hips, unable to resist with his need.

“Please Cas!” Dean cried out, panting harshly after a few more minutes of torment. “Lemme loose. I’m dying here!”

“I’m going to have to work on your stamina,” I said nonchalantly, still moving my hips steadily. “I used to do this to you for hours.”

“This body’s used to thirty seconds!” Dean said through gritted teeth.

“Tsk. We’re going to have to retrain you.”

“Not tonight, please!” Dean asked, his pleas holding an edge of desperation that drove me to mercy. 

“Touch me,” I said, releasing Dean’s hands and bringing them to my cock. He started stroking me, his grip disjointed as I moved on top of him. My movements became more urgent, even as he whined under me, desperate for release. He squirmed, pushing up into my body with each thrust, trying harder to break through the barrier I kept tight around the base of his cock, impossible though it was. I was close though, so close, like pressure building up inside me. Just a few more hard thrusts against Dean, and just as I was about tip over, I released him. He let out a wild yell, jerked up hard against me one last time, and then he came. I could feel the extra heat inside me, thick and wet, built up for too long. With my own gasping cry, I followed Dean, lights flashing in front of my eyes as I came for the second time that night.

“Damn,” Dean said after a few moments, still panting harshly. “We haven’t done that in ages.”

I looked up at him, blinking with confusion, and realized the flashes of light hadn’t been my imagination, but the light bulbs in the room blowing out from the uncontrolled frenzy of my orgasm. I was glad for the darkness so Dean couldn’t see my embarrassment. It had been a very, very long time since I’d lost control like that. A quick check and I was relieved to know it was contained to Dean’s room, and not the whole block. We’d done that once for a very memorable anniversary.

In the complete darkness, we disentangled, but stayed close, still hungry for more and more contact after so long, almost afraid to let go of each other. I had struggled with my decision to let Dean go, second guessing myself even while Terrence and Shayla packed up my books. Being in his arms again, with his real eyes looking back at me, I was assured by what a mistake that would have been. Like he said about Sam earlier, I had to let him make his own decision. And he couldn’t make a decision without all the facts. Of course, I realized, now I couldn’t either.

All of a sudden, Dean had gotten his memories back. He’d flown into my arms. We’d had make-up sex so to speak. But what happened next? I didn’t have a plan for this. Everything had been thrown aside to let Dean have his own life again. Be with his family, get a girlfriend, go to school. That’s right! He was supposed to go to college in a few weeks. He’d been so excited when he got more than one acceptance letter. He’d flipped back and forth between his choices for weeks before he settled. 

And what about Deirdre and Calvin? They weren’t surrogate parents. They couldn’t be easily tossed aside. I knew Dean loved them. And Sam too. What would we do about him? I had no idea what I was supposed to do now.

“Cas,” Dean murmured in the darkness, turning over to face me, even though he could barely see me. “What do we do now?”

I sighed with relief, a little bubbled up laugh. I wasn’t the only one with racing thoughts and worries anymore. Yet another reason I loved Dean, we were always on the same page. “You mean about school? And your parents? And all that other Dean Baker stuff?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, and I could hear some reluctance in his voice. Some embarrassment maybe that he was still attached to this life. “I’m still really excited about going off to school. I already picked out my classes…”

“Why shouldn’t you be? You never went to college before,” I said.

“Don’t you wanna, you know…. Drive off into the sunset together?”

“Do you want to drive off into the sunset together?” I asked. I watched Dean bite his lip for a moment, feigning indecision, but I already knew what he was going to say, so I leaned in to kiss his worrying lips. “I’m not going to snatch you away from them. I have followed you every step of the way, Dean, through Heaven, Hell, life, and a second life. You don’t ever have to hunt again if you don’t want.”

“Now hold on a second, no one said anything about not hunting,” Dean said quickly. “I’ve got Christmas break, spring break, and the whole summer to take on the old family business. I’m not about to let like, 100 years of experience go to waste.”

Righteousness was burning through Dean, brighter than before. In his past life, his soul had always burned hottest when he talked about hunting. Saving people wasn’t in his blood, this was clear, it was in his soul, and would repeat over and over again, even without past memories. 

“Oh my God, I can finally drive Baby!” Dean suddenly said, sitting up straight in bed. “I can’t believe you told me to cheat on her with a Toyota. A fuckin’ Toyota!” Dean punched me in the arm, and then cocked his head with consideration. “How the hell have you been keeping her running this long?” he asked suspiciously.

“Uhm…” I hemmed. “You know. Regular oil changes and maintenance, some elbow grease like you taught me…”

“You’re using grace on her!” Dean gasped, scandalized.

“The parts ran out!” I said in defense. “I searched everywhere, but there’s no more parts for her. I had to keep her running. She’s all I had left of you. And when you and Sam saw her… What else could I do?”

“We’ll see,” Dean said gruffly. I could see his fingers itching, wanting to get under the hood of his car to see what I’d done to her, fairly certain he would find a way to run her naturally. I was equally confident that he wouldn’t. His determination was somewhat undercut by a jaw cracking yawn. He’d been through a lot that day, attacked by a monster, regaining the memories of a past life, sex and a lover’s spat. “I need to get back to my tent,” he said, the last word caught in another yawn. “I am getting too old-” he cut himself off with a laugh. “Gotta be careful not to say stuff like that, huh? You gonna come by tomorrow night, too?”

“I will,” I said. It reminded me of when Dean and Sam still hunted together, staying at motels each night. When they were done hunting and researching for the day, I’d come to collect Dean and spend the night with him in an unoccupied motel room. Sam knew about it, and teased us for our conspicuous sneaking around. 

“And the night after?” Dean went on, and I nodded again. “And sneak me out of my dorm room?” I told him yes, and kissed him. I’d come to him every night, forever, wherever he was. I would follow him.

~ Epilogue ~

Four months later, Baby rumbled up in the parking lot behind Dean’s dormitory. He was there with an oversized backpack and grinning like a fool. He’d told his parents he was going on a skiing trip with some friends, but he’d be home for Christmas. Well, we were going to the mountains at least.

“Shay, Terrence,” Dean said by way of greeting as he climbed into the driver’s seat, while I scooted across the bench to the shotgun position. I’d let Shayla sit there on the drive up, but quickly shooed her to the back seat with her father before Dean could see. He was still a bit jealous that he was stuck with his Toyota while at school, but Baby was simply too fine for a freshman to have.

“What we got?” Dean asked, putting Baby into drive. Despite his best efforts with her at the end of the summer, he could not get her to run without my grace. I tried not to be too smug about it when he finally gave up and very grudgingly thanked me for keeping her running. 

“Probably a woman in white,” Shayla said. “Mountain town has a stretch of highway where men keep dying or disappearing. Two women committed suicide around the timeline we’re looking at, so we’ll start there.”

“Woman in white,” Dean said almost wistfully. “That was me and Sammy’s first hunt when we got back together. Those bitches are crazy.”

“You can’t call women bitches anymore,” Shayla snapped immediately. “It isn’t 2030. If you’re gonna go undercover as my boyfriend, you better not be spewing that old fashioned misogynistic garbage.”

“Sorry!” Dean said hurriedly, a genuine blush of embarrassment coming up on his cheeks. “Sometimes that shit just comes out. I didn’t mean it.”

“She’s not crazy either,” Shayla said, more calmly after Dean’s apology. “Something drove her to suicide, but she didn’t know she’d come back as a ghost. It’s our job to set her free.”

“Set her free, huh? Yeah, I like the sound of that,” Dean said, his features softening. “Saving people, freeing monsters, the family business,” he said with a laugh. “Hey, just wait until Sam’s all caught up with this. You two will work great together,” Dean said fondly. 

“What did you tell Sam about your trip?” I asked, suspicious. Sam was not getting his memories back anytime soon, but he already knew about the supernatural after that incident in the woods. Eager for more, and with Dean unable to resist his little brother, we’d told him bits and pieces of what was going on. I’d been explained away as a hunter though. Angel mythology could wait. 

“I told him the truth…” Dean hedged. “… He wants to come next time.”

“No way,” I said firmly. “He’s too young, and the experience could be too jarring for his memories.”

“He can do research,” Dean said. “And Shayla can keep an eye on him, right Shay?”

“I’m not babysitting a high schooler.”

“He’s very mature for his age,” Dean said. “And taller than me,” he went on, dredging up the words with no small annoyance. They’d been neck and neck through most of high school, and then Sam shot an inch up over his brother at the end of the summer. Dean had been mildly annoyed before he got his memories back, after, he was practically wrathful.

“Don’t try making any Winchester love matches with my daughter,” Terrence grumbled from the back. I could imagine Shayla rolling her eyes without having to look.

“We’re not Winchesters anymore,” Dean said. “That line’s dead, and it’s gonna stay that way. We’re the Bakers now.”

We drove off, not into the sunset, but into a new day. Some things were the same, some things were very different. It was a new life, but still with Dean, and there was so much to do. No matter what it was though, so long as Dean was driving, I was happy.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Searching For the Righteous Man [podfic/art]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2525339) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




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